In the past decade, cement plants have made concerted efforts in the area of optimizing energy consumption and succeeded in bring down the specific consumption from the level of over 100 electrical units per ton to less than 80 units. For coal the figure is down from 750 kilocalories to less than 600. This has been done by some logical steps and modifications in the production process. Each unit of reduction now requires a lot more effort to achieve as compared to the previous reduction. Therefore, the need of the hour is fine tuning the system by more sophisticated means to achieve cost reduction and devising newer ways of lowering consumption.
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