A cement producer operating a manufacturing plant in Festus, MO. adds flyash to the cement in order to improve the material characteristics of the cement produced at this facility. This is typical in cement production.

Flyash in the cement industry is the finely divided residue resulting from the combustion of ground or powdered coal, which is transported from the firebox through the boiler by flue gases. Flyash is a by-product of coal-fired electric generating plants. The flyash used at this Missouri facility comes from a nearby power plant and is stored in silos at the cement plant site. In order to ensure efficient production of the plant, the cement producer needs to know exactly how much flyash they have at any given time.

The cement producer recently added another silo for their flyash storage, increasing the total to two silos. The new silo is about 60ft. (18.3m) high and 21ft. (6.4m) in diameter. The amount of flyash available can impact their production capacity significantly. Recent demand necessitated the additional silo and the cement producer needed a way to accurately measure the amount of material. The other silo has an aging sonar unit and the producer was keen on moving away from this technology to something that would be accurate and more reliable, even during filling when heavy dust exists within the silo.

Quenton Schott of Missouri Filter has been representing Monitor Technologies LLC for many years and has been selling products to this Missouri facility for quite some time so it

wasn’t a surprise when Quenton got the opportunity to meet their needs on the flyash silo. Flyash is a powder and the internal silo atmosphere during filling is extremely dusty, but Schott knew he had a solution for his customer. After quickly consulting with Monitor Technologies, the Flexar™ guided wave radar continuous level sensor was recommended and quoted.

Installation and start-up was quick and easy. Monitor’s technical support manager, Greg DeRudder, made a courtesy call at the plant a couple of weeks after installation and everything had been done perfectly. Even though flyash has a low dielectric constant Flexar’s direct measuring mode was extremely successful in providing real-time continuous updates of the material level during filling and drawdown. In fact, the cement producer claims the Flexar unit is “excellent” and they couldn’t be happier. In fact, the sonar unit in the old silo has since been replaced by Flexar as well.

No matter what business you are in and no matter what product or service you sell, training is a component of human resources management that no company should overlook. Those that do overlook and under-invest in training will usually suffer with sluggish profits and the absence of growth opportunities.

As an ISO 9001:2000 certified company, we at Monitor Technologies LLC believe that training is a vital element to employee AND customer development. It is a component of Monitor’s SecureCareSM customer service for Monitor employees and field sales representatives, and for our customers.

Our training programs and materials are designed to increase the technical and application knowledge of our sales engineering staff, sales representative and distributor/reseller personnel, and our customer’s staff that deal with level and solids flow instrumentation. It’s another reason our customers find it so easy to do business with us. We develop the most competent sales and support personnel and assist our customers in developing their people as well.

Standard and customized training experiences are offered periodically or on-demand. Monitor

combines nearly 5 decades of product application experience with state-of-the-art presentation and training tools, such as animated self-running training tutorials, multi-media interactive guides and solid hands-on techniques to continuously improve the training experience we provide as we continue our pursuit of “Setting The Standard For Supplier Excellence”.

If you wish to arrange a technical and application training program, please contact the Monitor Technologies factory or our local area representative.