On Friday 30 th of August,2019 we the students of BBA General first year from Inspiria Knowledge Campus Siliguri went for our first Industrial visit of our session, to Darjeeling cement ltd manufacturing plant Rangapani West Bengal.We boarded our college bus around 9:30 am and reached the factory in between 10 am to 10:20 am. Here, as we were preparing to enter the factory
some mandatory safety tips and equipment such as face masks were provided to the students. All set and prepared we now entered the factory. At first we had no clue of the environment we were in, there were big machines everywhere in different shapes and sizes. We were feeling like explorers walking on a mini cement desert hidden from civilization, aloof from the city lights “and we meant business”. Curiosity hit everyone hard and i could see most of us looking here and there for answers. After a while of wandering the supervisor showed up and took charge of the situation. He gave us a detailed explanation of cement manufacturing process.
According to his expertise cement manufacturing process begins with mining and then grinding raw materials that include limestone and clay to a fine powder. Which is then heated to a temperature as high as 1450 Degrees Celsius in a cement kiln. In this process, the chemical bonds of the raw materials are broken down and then they are recombined into new compounds. The result of this process is called clinker, which are rounded nodules between 1mm and 25mm across. Than the clinker is broken down to a fine powder in a cement mill and mixed with gypsum to create cement. Gypsum plays a very important role in controlling the rate of hardening of the cement. It is introduced during the final grinding process. After gaining all the technical aspects of cement manufacturing and scanning through every inch of the factory we were all now fatigued. There were refreshments given to us at the end of the activity and every drop was ecstatic. Then it was followed by some group photographs before we all boarded our bus and went back to our college. In today’s industrial visit we learned about various elements of a cement factory also about various stages of production and the whole process of manufacturing cement from raw materials like limestone, clay, clinker and gypsum to the final product and the packaging process. Altogether it was a great experience to know the insights of how a manufacturing plant functions.
