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The use of refuse-derived fuel (RDF) in cement kilns offers a multifaceted approach to sustainability, addressing environmental, economic, and social aspects. By converting waste into a valuable energy source, RDF reduces landfill use, conserves natural resources, lowers greenhouse gas emissions, and promotes a circular economy. This sustainable practice not only supports the cement industry in meeting regulatory requirements but also advances global efforts toward more sustainable waste management and energy production systems. This research promotes the integration of RDF as fuel in cement kilns to reduce the use of fossil fuels by improving the control of the combustion. Addressing the variable composition of RDF requires continuous monitoring to ensure operational stability and product quality, traditionally managed by operators through visual inspections. This study introduces a real-time, computer vision- and deep learning-based monitoring system to aid in decision-making, utilizing existing kiln imaging devices for a non-intrusive, cost-effective solution applicable across various facilities. The system generates two detailed datasets from the kiln environment, undergoing extensive preprocessing to enhance image quality. The YOLOv8 algorithm was chosen for its real-time accuracy, with the final model demonstrating strong performance and domain adaptation. In an industrial setting, the system identifies critical elements like flame and clinker with high precision, achieving 25 frames per second (FPS) and a mean average precision (mAP50) of 98.8%. The study also develops strategies to improve the adaptability of the model to changing operational conditions. This advancement marks a significant step towards more energy-efficient and quality-focused cement production practices. By leveraging technological innovations, this research contributes to the move of the industry towards sustainability and operational efficiency.

Syz talks about Koichi who was telling him about various aspects of kilns and how the dating of this type of porcelain was being reconsidered in the latest scholarly debates and publications. There were many interesting technical details and lessons, which he always was ready to share. He also became quite animated with people who showed genuine interest in the art.

Currently, the production of one ton of ordinary Portland cement (OPC) releases considerable amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. As the need and demand for this material grows exponentially, it has become a challenge to increase its production at a time when climate-related problems represent a major global concern. The two main CO2 contributors in this process are fossil fuel combustion to heat the rotary kiln and the chemical reaction associated with the calcination process, in the production of the clinker, the main component of OPC. The current paper presents a critical review of the existent alternative clinker technologies (ACTs) that are under an investigation trial phase or under restricted use for niche applications and that lead to reduced emissions of CO2. Also, the possibility of transition of clinker production from traditional rotary kilns based on fuel combustion processes to electrification is discussed, since this may lead to the partial or even complete elimination of the CO2 combustion-related emissions, arising from the heating of the clinker kiln.

A rotary kiln is a unique facility with widespread applications not only in the process industry, such as building-material production, but also in the energy sector. There is a lack of a more comprehensive review of this facility and its perspectives in the literature. This paper gives a semi-systematic review of current research. Main trends and solutions close to commercial applications are found and evaluated. The overlap between process and energy engineering brings the opportunity to find various uncommon applications. An example is a biogas plant digestate treatment using pyrolysis in the rotary kiln. Artificial intelligence also finds its role in rotary kiln control processes. The most significant trend within rotary kiln research is the waste-to-energy approach in terms of various waste utilization within the process industry or waste pyrolysis in terms of new alternative fuel production and material utilization. Results from this review could open new perspectives for further research, which should be focused on integrated solutions using a process approach. New, complex solutions consider both the operational (mass calculations) and the energy aspects (energy calculations) of the integration as a basis for the energy sustainability and low environmental impact of rotary kilns within industrial processes.

Charcoal production is an activity that dates back over the years. The objective of the study was to determine the temperature and heating ramp in industrial carbonization processes using different kiln types and to quantify its impact on yield and quality of charcoal from different firewood species. The selection of sites, kiln types, and species investigated was based on those with highest production in Mexico. Brazilian beehive kilns using Arbutus xalapensis, Quercus durifolia, and Quercus sideroxyla species were analyzed; modified Brazilian beehive kilns with Pithecellobium dulce and Tamarindus indica; Argentine half-orange kilns with Quercus magnoliifolia and Q. sideroxyla, industrial metal kilns with Brosimum alicastrum, Vitex gaumeri, Manilkara zapota, and Pouteria unilocularis. The process time, temperature, heating ramp, production yield, and quality of charcoal produced were determined. Data were analyzed in a completely random statistical design. The industrial type kilns showed the highest production yield (>35%), and the Brazilian beehive kilns obtained the longest carbonization time (>240 h). On the other hand, the modified Brazilian beehive kilns obtained the best energetic characteristics (>75% fixed carbon and <16% volatile material). A carbonization process with a slow heating ramp (<1 °C min−1) and temperatures of 500–600 °C can generate a charcoal with export quality.

Over the recent years, the brick industry of the state has been facing competition from several other building materials. These include cement and cement blocks. In most developing countries, brick makers make only a unique type and color of brick, leaving the user very little choice. As a result, substitute products enter the market which have the same function but are cheaper, more regular and pleasing in look. These substitutes satisfy the consumers more than bricks do. Although in general, the output of bricks is quite elastic, in the sense that increased construction activities are closely followed by an increase in brick production, the brick industry does have certain challenges posed by competition from substitutes. It is evident from the fore going discussion that bricks face stiff competition from alternative building materials. Therefore, in order to remain competitive, the clay brick industry will have to contain cost, increase module size, reduce mortar usage and improve ease of layering in order to retain and increase market share in the building and construction industry. Bricks in general are preferred, even if they are of low quality, because of their inherent and perceived characteristics of strength and moisture resistance. The industry will therefore have to emphasize if positive characteristics and options in order to compete with the alternative building materials which have a similar function. The brick industry, being ancillary to the construction industry, is intimately connected with the growth of the latter. Any attempts for market assessment should therefore focus on estimation of demand, supply and price position in the construction industry. There is little doubt that in the foreseeable future there will be an increasing demand for housing, particularly in cities and urban areas. To provide shelter for all, all construction sectors, including traditional sectors should be involved in providing affordable housing for the urban as well as the rural poor people. If these poorer sections of the population are to be assisted to build durable as well as affordable housing, the focus of attention will have to be placed on the provision of suitable and affordable building materials. Unfortunately it appears that in developing countries, the major thrust in the building materials industry has been placed on the more modern building materials. However, in most countries there is a need for cheap and good quality local building materials such as bricks, wood, bamboo etc. These are the materials most people of these countries can afford. If locally produced materials using local resources are utilized, which are often renewable, the cost will be low and income will be generated at the local level. Therefore, the development of the local building materials industry must receive close attention and utmost care. The objective of the local building materials industries should be not only to make available the materials traditionally used by the low income sections of the community but also to modify production processes and construction techniques to enable construction of houses which are structurally more durable and functionally more adequate. However, this books deals with brick manufacturing and its history details to provide updated information to the readers. Therefore, throughout the book, different authors present very interesting works related to the brick manufacturing in home and abroad. There is no doubt buyers will benefit by getting an excellent piece of this book.

It is difficult to identify the working conditions of the rotary kilns due to the harsh environment in the kilns. The flame images of the firing zone in the kilns contain a lot of working condition information, but the flame image data sample size is too small to be used to fully extract the key features. In order to solve this problem, a method combining transfer learning and attention mechanism is proposed to extract key features of flame images, in which the deep residual network is used as the backbone network, the coordinate attention module is introduced to capture the position information and channel information on the branch of feature graphs, and the features of flame images obtained are further screened to improve the extraction ability. At the same time, migration learning is performed by the pre-trained ImageNet data set, and feature migration and parameter sharing are realized to cope with the training difficulty of a small sample data size. Moreover, an activation function Mish is introduced to reduce the loss of effective information. The experimental results show that, compared with traditional methods, the working condition recognition accuracy of rotary kilns is improved by about 5% with the proposed method.

The rotary kiln is an important production equipment in the building materials and metallurgy industry, and its operating conditions, safety, and efficiency largely determine the economic benefits of its users and the safety of workers on site. At present, the testing methods for each rotary kiln part are relatively mature and can be used to realize accurate measurements in a dynamic environment. However, the main means of measurement is limited by the site conditions, and the actual detection speed is slow; the preparation work is cumbersome and will be subject to the measurement of the site obstacles and other environmental factors constraints. In this paper, we propose and design an optimized rotary kiln centerline measurement method using the free station method and verify its feasibility with respect to the optimization of the centerline offset, which is an important measurement item in rotary kiln measurement.