In a Nutshell, ICC

Iligan City, hailed as the industrial capital of the Philippines, is home to a myriad of industrial and chemical plants. The industries range from metallurgy to food, caustic soda to pulp and paper, and of course- cement. Here in Iligan City, there are two cement plants, and one of them is Iligan Cement Corporation.

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Figure 1. The arresting cement silos. The first silo is for Type 1, the second for Type 1P and the third for Type P cement.

What is Iligan Cement Corporation?

ICC, as what the corporation is fondly called, started as an expansion program of the Mindanao Portland Cement Corporation (MPCC). Later however, the multinational company Lafarge bought it out. ICC is one of the top ten cement manufacturers in the Philippines. Established on February 19, 1971, ICC Cement plant is the 16^th cement processing plant to be established in the country and the only cement plant with an automated loading system for bulk and clinker exports.

ICC is certified for its QUALITY, ENVIRONMENT, HEALTH and SAFETY MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS (ISO 9001, 14001 and OHSAS 18001) - the first in the Lafarge Philippine group.

Note: Lafarge is the largest manufacturer of cement and concrete products in the world. Lafarge is also present in the Philippines. In concrete roof tile, CPAC Monier Inc. In gypsum, Boral Plasterboard.

The Plant

A. Location

The ICC plant is located in Kiwalan, Iligan City, 9.0 kilometers from city proper.

A. Safety

Figure 2. The cumbersome yet necessary PPE, with Jelyn and a fellow trainee.

The plant is known for their strict and tight implementation of health and safety rules and regulations, with their aim of having zero lost-time injuries. As such, the management requires mandatory Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) when working at specific points in the plant particularly in the process line. These are hard hats, safety footwear, high visibility clothing, dust mask and gloves. Also, anyone who enters the plant, whether employee or visitor, is given a safety badge, on which the H and S regulations of the plant is found. The badge will be punched every time a safety regulation is violated, corresponding to a certain sanction.

A. Products

ICC manufactures three types of cement:

1. Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) or Type 1

2. Portland Plus Cement Type 1P

3. Pozzolan Premium Type P

These are marketed under the brand name Mindanao Cement.

B. The Process Flow.

Quarrying. The ICC quarry is accessed 3-4 km from plant via MPCC road. The 519 hectares of quarry area houses 169.92 million MT of limestone and 25.25 million MT of shale.

Crushing. The crusher is composed of a primary jaw crusher and secondary crusher with a production rate of 310 tons per hour (tph). The feed enters at 800 mm average diameter and exits at 40 mm average diameter.

Drying. The plant utilizes 2 drum dryers with a production rate of 150 tph. The drying medium is heated air through a rectangular furnace heated with ricehulls and hot gas from preheater exhaust. The feed moisture, from 13% becomes 3% for limestone, 26% to 13% for shale and 26% to 13% for pozzolan. The fuel usage is at 90 kCal/kg dried materials and alternative fuels constitute 35% of the fuels used.

Proportioning. After drying of raw materials, proportioning is done before they are feed into the raw mill. The standard proportion is 76% limestone, 20.9% shale, 4% silica sand and 0.1% cinder.

Raw Milling. The mill is a Kawasaki-make ball mill, with a drive of 2200 kW and a production rate of 140 tph. It is operated closed-circuit with bucket elevators. The average power of the mill is 21 kWh per ton of dried materials.

Figure 3. The commanding raw mill silos.

Clinkering. After the raw mill product is homogenized, they will be fed to the kiln which comes in the four-stage suspension preheater type, with a rated capacity of 1580 tons per day. The preheater is composed of 4 cyclones, with the feed reaching different temperatures at each. At 100 degrees Celsius, which is roughly t

he temperature of the first cyclone, water is removed. Next, the chemically combined water is removed at the next cyclone at a temperature of about 500°C. At 900°C, on the other hand, decarbonation and CaO formation occurs at the third stage. Furthermore, the hot meal proc

eeds to the rotary kiln where at 1220°C, C₂S. C₃A and

C₄AF and C₃S are formed. Then finally at 1450

°C clinker is formed.

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Figure 4. The towering preheater.

Figure 5. JanMell and the amazing rotary kiln.

Cooling. Since the product from the kiln is extremely hot, this stage is needed. The plant’s cooler is a conventional reciprocating grate type cooler with a rated capacity of 2500 tons per day. It has 6 chambers with beam aeration at first chamber only and there are 8 cooling fans installed.

Proportioning. The proper proportion of clinker and additives dictates the type of cement produced. For Type 1 cement, clinker constitutes 93%, limestone 4% and the remaining 3% is gypsum. For Type P, clinker is 63%, pozzolana is 34% and the 3% is gypsum. The other type, Type 1P Portland Plus composition is not disclosed.

Finish Milling. The plant has two finish mills, one located in the ICC plant (for TP and T1P cement) and the other located at the adjacent MPCC plant (for T1 and T1P cement). They are all ball mills with a production rate of 65 tons per hour, operating closed-circuit and with a drive of 2200 kW.

Packing and Shipping. The packing is accomplished by 2 Roto packers and 1 line packer with capacities of 3500 bags per hour. Each cement bag weighs 40 kg approximately. As evident, there are 3 cement silos corresponding to the three cement types, with each silo having a capacity of 12,000 MT. The dispatching is done in the overland through trucks and offshore through ships.

Iligan Cement Corporation is one of the top cement manufacturers in the Philippines and is one of the contributors of economic boost in Iligan City. Today, Iligan cement’s plant manager and VPO is Mr. Danilo Trugillo, a graduate of Chemical Engineering and Ceramics Engineering. He took up his CerE in MSU- Iligan Institute of Technology. His leadership, collated with the previous and current managers and personnels, contractors, employees and yes, apprentices has made Iligan Cement on top of its game. “For our dreams, trust only Mindanao Cement.”

[06.23.10]

Best of Both Worlds

It was a rather balmy morning and by some kind of miracle the OJT Orientation managed to make me feel motivated I could almost sprint all the way to the venue without minding the almost 10 kilometer distance at all.

“Please welcome, our Senior Process Engineer, here to discuss about the cement process flow. Let us all give him a hand.”

Certainly! At the sound of his position, I even thought he could also have my feet. He thanked us, and his next statement hit home.

“I am a Chemical engineer by profession...”

Surprised? No.

Amazed? Na-ah.

Rather, I was happy that a chemical engineer by profession is a senior process engineer, and not a laboratory detainee.

It is a common foreknowledge amongst incoming OJT’s that the stigma brought by the word chemical is very much pronounced even when appended with the word engineering. Hence, I’d already projected to the will of universe that time that even though my course is harder to spell, and takes longer to fully write, I’d still end up doing B.S. Chemistry stuff. And true enough, by the incontrovertible law of attraction, the universe projected it back.

Don’t get me wrong. I love being in the Quality Assurance Department. My supervisors, and of course the manager, are people you can easily get along. They were a very kind group, and somehow, now that the training is over, I miss them. I miss how I greet them good morning when I time in, arguing that a minute before noon is technically, still, morning. I miss how I was asked by the manager to make a calendar of events and how he was surprised by the apparent expertise of how I constructed it, not knowing there are plenty of calendar templates available for download. I miss the feeling of apprehension every time the phone rang simply because I might become my unrefined self and brush telephone etiquette away. I miss being practically drowned in cement samples waiting to be analyzed, and of course, I miss break time moments with employees and fellow trainees alike (especially the free meals and the “kuha lang mog bisag unsa sa canteen, i-charge lang sa akoa” line).

But sentimentality aside, while I was working in the laboratory I felt like singing Streisand’s “A piece of sky,” or Freddie Mercury’s “Break Free.” I have long since harbored the adventurous feeling that chemineers are supposed to crush, grind, agitate, sub-sonically flow, or isenthalpically throttle and not titrate, stir, filter, analytically weigh or precisely standardize. That is, as blatant as Section 4 of Article I of the Chemical Engineering Law which defines chemineering practice as, “… excluding chemical analysis and operation of the chemical laboratory…” However I have to make it clear, that even though at this premise the objective of the training seems to be flawed, I do not undermine the administration’s effort to offer quality apprenticeship and the things I had learned, developed and cultivated during the duration of my worthwhile adventure, and that even though I spent most of my time on the laboratory, there were a couple of instances where I was asked by the process engineers to do nothing short of discharge calibration of conveyor belt for gypsum and maintenance of dryers, valves, cyclones, and other equipment.

The world is not black or white. Having an amazing learning experience both academically and socially doesn’t have to be constrained by the dictums. Yes, I was at the laboratory, mostly, and according to the icy statement it is not definitive of the practice of my profession. But chemical engineering practice does not stop at those criteria. A true chemical engineer is someone who loves being one, who delights in being one, and is proud to declare that he is one despite the apparent misplacement in the laboratory.

“I am a Chemical Engineer by profession…” is insufficient.

“I am a Chemical Engineer by heart…” sums it all.

During my training I was lucky enough to say I had the best of both worlds. True, excursions to the process line might be sporadic due to safety concerns, but the moment it came, I had the most of it. Somehow, my assignment in the lab made me even more eager to discover the art and science of Chemical Engineering.

[06.29.10]

Mactan Rock Adventure Winner

The winner for last week's caption writing contest involving two hapless individuals (Ha ha) is.... (drumroll, please),

Mayekai..

Because, apparently, you're a fan from a far away place, I'll just come to you personally this Tuesday to give you your prize! See you sa classroom.

Bobbie and JP

For the next Caption Writing contest. (Ha ha, can't help it. It's so funny.) Write a caption for this photo, post your answer in comments, and the funniest caption (make it even funnier than the photo itself haha) will get to eat at Kaw Gud! (Oy, Nadz did i spell it right?)

Go. Deadline is next Sunday.

Excited!

I never really watched the animated series like a lizard stuck to the television screen, but I have played the game on PSP and I was amazed by his powers and that arrow on his forehead. Yes, I'm talking about Aang, the last airbender, and before I knew it, it's already a movie.

I first saw the trailer at Studio 23's Quick-E (by the way, Aaron Atayde's hosting is so natural, you'll think he's really kalog in real life plus, the grammar is perfect. Gimme more viral shots!) and I vowed that all hell will break loose, and not even the last airbender would be able to stop me If by any means I would'nt be able to see it.

At least there's a Cinema 2.

Unfortunately, the moviehouses here in Iligan City apparently are a million light years away from other cinemas, such that what movies we see here are those movies shown in cinemas in other cities a million years ago. Nevertheless, one can wait. I don't wanna be disappointed though. I already had much of the disappointment when I failed to watch Emir because I did not know it's already showing ( I thought it would be after a million years or so, I waited too much it got past me) , and when I watched I'll be there with only KC's fashion sense and Jericho's kilig factor to manage me through it.

By the way, Dev Patel (yup, the slumdog boy) will be playing the villain here and and another by the way, when will Gaisano's Cinemas 3 and 4 be finished?

How Ironic!

Recently, I've been fascinated with something I would like to label as a no nonsense comic strip. It's called subnormality, something I found out from idly browsing at cracked.com. It's part of an archive of comic strips at www.viruscomix.com. I could put the comic strips that I like most here, and that would be everything. It's got wit, humor, and it's wicked. I particularly like this one.

Why did you take up Chemical Engineering, huh, JanMell?

BATTLING INNER WARS By JanMell Dugenio

It’s 7:00 pm. You’re hungry, and then you decide to go out for dinner. You’re walking along Tibanga highway with all the eateries and fast-food chains to flood your vision. You walk to, and when you seemingly reach Gaisano mall, you walk your way back again, and find yourself heading home. Then you pinch yourself, and finally settled on Jollibee. Never mind, you say, that you’re Php40 transmuted into a plate of shanghai rolls and the ever scant rice, a glass of fizzy soda, and one peso. You just needed a clean and well-lighted place, so you could sink your mind into something in need of utmost attention, it feels like your dendrites and axons would shred. You were just given an assignment; call it an onus, a yoke, a terrible joke in the form of an interrogative sentence. The kind of joke that makes you smile but your face reads worry. And then you hear it again—clearly now, quite dreadfully, in a very deep, terrifying tone—you’re teacher saying, “Why did you take up Chemical Engineering?” (Put maniacal laughter, lightning and thunder effects here.)

And then you’re in my shoes.

It was neither an accident that I took up chemical engineering nor was it because I let my index finger play into the course list with my eyes closed, and then I said “Stop!”, and behold, “I’ll take that!” I would have to blame my former third year Chemistry teacher, Mrs. Zyhrine Mayormita, for igniting that spark which fueled my interest towards Chemistry (which later on grew to a conflagration), and when she mentioned that Mr. Edmark Icalina (apparently one of her two favorite students, I am the other one. Ha ha) was taking up Chemical Engineering, my curiosity over the course grew. Moreover, my classmate, and one of my best buddies, said that he too, would take it up, and together with the name that sounds high profile, Engr. (attach name here), I decided to place ChE as my first choice on every admissions exams there are, even on one when ChE is not offered at all.

This is one book whom I've always longed to devour. The approach is fundamental, but not layman, and I believe every disciple of Chemineering must read this by heart if he wants to be good in his craft. Stuff toy not included.

But I never really thought of the deeper reasons behind my adventure. Surely, a teacher’s words and a friend’s enthusiasm are mere bagatelles. With only a year more before I finally finish my B.S., I was put back on a reality check with this assignment, (God, this is even more difficult than being questioned why, given that you are a cactus.)and in the rare event of rummaging through the recesses of my brain I found several reasons. I took up ChE because I thought:

1. Civil Engineering is so hackneyed it has become battered and bruised.

2. ME best suits big boys who can carry a car’s V8 engine, and probably the car, too.

3. I don’t want to be electrocuted. Plus, I find circuits too much of a headache.

4. B.S. Bio is so expensive, I pass out at the thought of paying PhP10,000 for a dive. (And in this category, I would never dare to mention B.S. Nursing. Oh, I just did.)

5. B.S. Chem is too feminine, and the Physics area is gloomy and exudes an air of diffidence that I vowed never to place myself near it.

6. All CASS subjects can be self-taught.

And probably, the one with most sense, and not based purely on whims of a 20 year old who thinks he’s still a child,

7. I think ChE would give me more job opportunities, will make me a dignified and exemplary citizen of the world (in short, rich) and will give me an air of immense intelligence such that when I walk by (put wind effect here), you could hear me saying “Get out of my way”, without opening my mouth, and then everybody says “Whoah!”

Basically, that’s it. I wanted to lift my family’s poverty and put some bills on the coffers. The closest solution that I could think of is to choose a college degree that would best serve my purpose, without squeezing me dry of finances, even if it turns my brain into a dried coral. You see, I am not really good in Math of which my course is teeming. In high school, my idea of the inverse of functions is snoitcnuf. But I toiled, and managed not without adventure, to reach 5^th year without losing the main momentum (euphemism for a GPA which is nice to look at and makes you confident to leave your COR open for anyone to gawk.) It is my family’s future, not just mine, which is at stake. I do believe now, quite seriously, that they are the reason why I took up Chemical engineering.

[06.22.10]