ABSTRACT
Broadly speaking, sensors are devices that detect and respond to changes in surroundings. Inputs can come from a variety of sources such as light, heat, motion, pressure, moisture, and similar physical parameter, and the outputs of sensors can be in any other form and mostly electrical pulses. If the sensors are connected to a network, they can share data with other connected devices or they can provide the requisite information to process control and automation systems. To a significant extent, cement manufacturing has been in the forefront of sensors application. For years the cement industry has been using sensors for detecting and controlling temperature, flow, level, speed, gas emissions, bulk solids composition, conveyor belt drift, operational hazards, etc. With increasing scale of production, more operational complexity, and higher levels of automation and control, the traditional sensors are being replaced with smart sensors, which are microprocessor driven and include features such as communication capability and on-board diagnostic function. The smart sensors provide information to a monitoring system for enhanced operational efficiency and a dedicated condition monitoring system prevents hardware problems before they occur. Despite such advancements in sensor technology, it is still not adequate for intelligent cement manufacturing, as there are several critical parameters in cement process that cannot be directly measured. This has led to the development of soft sensors, which try to quantify difficult-to-measure parameters from the knowledge of easy-to-measure online process variables. Substantial progress is seen in the development of soft sensors for intelligent cement manufacturing, particularly in the environment of artificial intelligence. The chapter attempts to trace the application trends of sensors technology to making the cement production sustainable and intelligent.
