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Concrete Projects for Turbo-Powered
Growth Boosting capacity to power a massive new cement production line, Yamama
Saudi Cement Co Ltd, one of the largest cement manufacturers in the Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia, has now added another four SGT-600 units to the five already installed at this recordbreaking installation.
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Visitors to Riyadh, the royal capital of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,
cannot fail to be overwhelmed by a sense of its economic prosperity, explosive growth and burgeoning infrastructure. The city center
is a riot of modern architectural styles. While established buildings, including the ‘Kingdom Tower’ rising 302 meters high, dominate the urban center, the city’s suburbs are continuing to expand
at a rate and on a scale difficult to comprehend. With growth fueled
by the Petro-Dollar, tens of thousands of hectares of virgin desert
are being transformed into new roads, houses, shops and amenities.
Projects worth more than $250 billion have been undertaken in
Saudi Arabia as a whole and, as recently as May this year, the government released plans for the construction of the King Abdullah Financial District covering over 1.6 million square meters of land in the
royal capital.
BUILDING BOOM
With building, construction and infrastructure development taking
place on such a massive scale, new housing and commercial projects are placing a significant strain on both power and water utilities. Almost every drop of drinking water is imported by pipeline
from desalination plants on the east coast, some 400 kilometers distant, and existing power stations are barely able to meet escalating
electrical demand. Saudi Arabia's rapidly growing population and
artificially low power prices, combined with an annual growth in
demand of about 7 per cent, are increasing the pressure on supply
companies. Saudi government estimates indicate that, to keep pace
with the escalating demand for electricity, the country will need
to almost double its existing installed generating capacity to nearly
47 gigawatts by 2019. At the same time, the building boom has
created an equally large demand for basic building materials. As
almost every structure is based on block-work and cast concrete, it
is small wonder that the demand for cement as the single most
vital constituent of this material has now increased to more than
25 million tonnes per year in the Riyadh area alone, one of the
highest per capita consumption rates in the world.
CONCRETE CONNECTIONS
The development of the Yamama Saudi Cement Company, founded
in 1957, has paralleled the economic growth of its parent nation,
where, for more than 40 years, millions of cubic meters of concrete
and concrete products have been used in the expansion of the
Kingdom’s capital city. Located about 7 km south of central Riyadh,
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the original manufacturing facility—once a significant distance from
the city, but now merged within its suburbs—was based on a single kiln producing 300 tonnes per day of high quality Portland-type
cement. By 1985, keeping pace with the region’s relentless urban
and economic growth, Yamama had undertaken four successive expansion schemes, bringing a total of six kilns into operation, with
daily production levels reaching more than 8,700 tonnes of clinker.
The raw materials, a combination of clay, sand and limestone quarried on site, are crushed, milled and blended to a fine powder. In
the basic production process the dry powder is pre-heated and fed
to the kiln—a long, inclined, rotating cylinder—where it is fired
at very high temperatures up to 1650 degrees Centigrade, melting
and fusing the mixture to form a grey-black clinker. Gypsum is
added and the final mixture is crushed and finely milled to create
the grey powder we know as Portland cement.
POWER FOR PRODUCTION
In 1966, when production first started at the cement factory, there
was no grid to provide electricity for the energy-hungry manufacturing process and it was forced to rely completely on its own independent diesel-driven generating plant to provide power at 50 Hz.
After many years of operation it became necessary to retire the obsolescent power plant, which had become expensive to maintain
and produced high exhaust emissions. Although the electricity grid
is now widespread, the factory could not be connected to it, as the
public supply in Saudi Arabia uses the 60 Hz standard frequency.
Since Yamama Saudi Cement now has access to less expensive natural gas, the decision was made to build a new gas turbine-driven
power plant. In 2003 Siemens was awarded the turnkey contract to
supply a generating plant based on five dual-fuel 25 MW SGT-600
gas turbines, the entire installation entering commercial operation
in mid-2005.
MEETING THE DEMANDS OF A MEGA PLANT
Already one of the largest of eight cement manufacturing companies
in Saudi Arabia, Yamama had to react to the escalating requirement
for this fundamental constituent of concrete. With demand in Saudi
Arabia currently running at some 25 million tonnes of cement per
year, Yamama took the decision to embark on its most ambitiousever expansion project—a giant new production line with a capacity of over 10,000 tonnes of clinker per day. Due to enter full production in early 2007, this mega-production facility, bigger than all six
existing lines at the factory, will more than double the output of the
plant to a staggering 21,000 tonnes of cement each day.
To meet the huge new requirement for electrical power to operate
the monster production line, Yamama signed a further contract
with Siemens in mid-2004 to build a major extension to the recently commissioned five-turbine power station. This would comprise
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These four additional 25-MW units will power
Yamama’s giant new cement production line.
an additional four 25-MW units, again using dual-fuel SGT-600 gas
turbines burning gas for normal operation and light distillate as a
back-up fuel. The first two of the latest gas turbine-powered generating modules are currently being commissioned, a third unit is
being erected and the final power module has now been delivered
on site ready for erection.
COMMITTED TO THE CUSTOMER
Already delighted with both the performance of the existing five-unit
power plant and progress towards completion of the extension,
Yamama’s General Manager Mr Saud M. Al Dablan said that the installation is a shining example of what a customer and Siemens
can achieve together. “We have had first-class service, including the
fastest-possible response from Siemens and although the power
plant is not cheap, it will provide superb economy, saving us at least
30 per cent on fuel costs alone. Siemens has demonstrated a total
commitment to the project from the start, a business approach I wish
could be shared more widely,” commented Mr Dablan. The completed power project represents a record-breaking installation as the
largest number of these gas turbines supplied by Siemens to an
individual customer.
SOME LIKE IT HOT
In fact, operating in simple-cycle without inlet cooling in summer
ambient temperatures which can reach a blistering 50 degrees
Centigrade or even higher, the overall thermal efficiency of the gas
turbines is reduced significantly, although running costs are offset
by the relatively low price of fuel. Nonetheless, combining state-ofthe-art controls with advanced combustion technology, the Siemens
SGT-600 gas turbines are not only slashing exhaust emissions of
nitrogen oxides (NOx) to less than 25 parts per million, but these
well-proven industrial workhorses are designed to operate continuously with the highest reliability under the harshest environmental conditions which not only include exceptionally high ambient
temperatures, but also blown sand and mineral dust.
SEEKING SOLUTIONS TO MATCH CUSTOMER NEEDS
As a manufacturer whose raw materials are quarried and reduced to
a flour-like powder before being heated to incandescence by burning either gas or crude oil, Yamama Saudi Cement is exceptionally
conscious of the environmental impact of its plant on encroaching
urban development. The ability of its suppliers to provide environmentally friendly and cost-effective solutions to meet its needs as
a key supplier to the Kingdom’s building and construction industry
is absolutely paramount. The client-supplier partnership between
the cement manufacturer and Siemens is not only providing these
solutions, but is offering additional benefits. As well as providing
customer training as an integral part of the power project, the resident Siemens engineer will remain on-site to ensure a smooth handover. Clearly, an object lesson in cementing relationships.