Under-burn
A cold zone leaves free lime high, cement unsound, and 28-day strength short.
Agent A2 · Pyroprocess
Autonomous burning-zone control.
The kiln & pyro agent runs the whole pyroprocess, preheater, calciner, feed, fuel, oxygen, flame shape, and alternative-fuel firing, holding the burning zone in its knife-edge window to form alite and belite at the lowest stable energy.
±4°C
Burning-zone hold band
64%
Alternative-fuel rate held
−6%
Specific thermal energy
99.2%
Kiln availability
The flame is a black art. It shouldn't be a gamble.
A little too hot or too cold, a touch too much or too little fuel or oxygen, and the burn slips out of spec in minutes. Alternative fuels make the flame move faster than any operator can chase.
Over-burn
A hot zone forms rings and balls, wrecks refractory, and dusts the clinker.
Alt-fuel swings
Waste-fuel calorific value jumps, the flame moves, chemistry and emissions follow.
Runaways
A missed correction cascades into a kiln trip and a costly restart.
Perception
It sees the burn, not just the trend.
Soft-sensors fuse pyrometry, gas analysis, kiln-drive amps, and burner-camera vision into a live estimate of burning-zone temperature, flame shape, and clinker formation between lab samples.
- Burning-zone soft-sensor fuses shell scanner, pyrometer, and camera.
- Gas & combustion model tracks O₂, CO, and NOx at the back end.
- Coating & ring detection from shell temperature signatures.
Burning zone1,451 °C
Back-end temp1,050 °C
Kiln inlet O₂2.9 %
CO spike risklow
Ring formationwatch
Control
It writes the setpoints, every second.
The agent moves fuel split, kiln speed, ID-fan draft, and feed together, not one loop at a time, to hold the zone while pushing alternative fuel as high as stability allows.
- Coordinated MPC across fuel, feed, speed, and draft.
- Alt-fuel maximizer that respects flame and emissions limits.
- Trip-avoidance envelope with graceful hand-back to operators.
Main-fuel rate4.2 t/h
Alt-fuel rate64 %
Kiln speed3.8 rpm
ID-fan draft−6.1 mbar
Setpoint writeauto
Perceive, simulate, act, on the burning zone.
Estimate the zone
Fuse sensors and vision into a live burning-zone and flame estimate.
Simulate the move
Test the next fuel / feed / speed change against clinker formation in the twin.
Write setpoints
Send coordinated, bounded setpoints to the DCS / APC with a full trace.
Verify & adapt
Confirm the zone held and free lime dropped; adapt to the next fuel batch.
What the kiln agent governs
Loops controlled
Fuel split, feed rate, kiln speed, ID-fan draft, cooler grate.
Targets
Burning-zone temperature, back-end temperature, kiln-inlet O₂, free lime.
Alt-fuel
RDF, SRF, biomass, tyres, calorific tracking and firing rate.
Integration
OPC UA / Modbus to DCS and existing kiln APC; read-only fallback.
Hand-back
Operator can pause autonomy per loop at any time; bounded envelopes.
Trace
Every setpoint logged with the perception and twin state that justified it.
What autonomy on the kiln moves
Legacy control vs. Clinkum autonomy
Manual & rule-based
- One PID loop chases one variable
- Operator reacts to hourly lab free lime
- Alt-fuel kept low “to be safe”
- Ring and ball damage found late
- Craft leaves with the operator
Clinkum
- Coordinated control across all kiln loops
- Free lime predicted and pre-empted
- Alt-fuel pushed to the stability limit
- Coating drift flagged from shell signatures
- The craft is encoded and always on
“The burning zone used to walk every time we changed fuel. Now it holds, and we run more waste fuel than we dared to before.”
Kiln Operator · Integrated cement plant, 2× 4,000 tpd
Common questions
Only when you grant it. It runs in shadow first, then closed-loop within bounded envelopes, with per-loop pause and hand-back to operators at any time.
It tracks calorific value in near-real-time and adjusts firing so the flame and chemistry stay stable while pushing substitution as high as the emissions and stability limits allow.
The soft-sensor degrades gracefully, widens its uncertainty, and reduces autonomy or hands back before acting on bad data.
It can coordinate above or alongside existing APC, or replace legacy expert systems. Integration is via OPC UA / Modbus with a read-only fallback.
Adjacent agents
Put the burning zone on autopilot.
Start with a shadow-mode pilot on one kiln and a free-lime or energy target. Prove it before you close the loop.