We grind everything: Presentation of the Competence Center with new Roller press at Christian Pfeiffer headquarters in Beckum/Germany
“We grind everything” is how Christian Pfeiffer presents itself on its homepage. And the company has been committed to this theme for almost 100 years now. Christian Pfeiffer founded his company in 1925 with the aim of making grinding processes more efficient. A concern that is just as relevant today as it was nearly 100 years ago. As early as 1930, Christian Pfeiffer patented his invention, the Intermediate diaphragm for ball mills in the MONOBLOC design he invented, which wears less, is more robust and has positive effects on the grinding process. These diaghprams are still produced today, now in its 4th generation. So far 5000 have been installed. At the end of the 1930s, the product portfolio was expanded to include separators, which in turn made the grinding process much more efficient. The ground material is divided into the fine fraction and coarse particles, while the coarse fraction is returned to the mill for further grinding. This cycle reduces the retention time of the particles in the mill and prevents overgrinding. With very high target finenesses, the increase in performance can be up to 50% compared to the open circuit without separator.
As the company continued to develop, the grinding systems were re-envisioned, further developed and optimized. Integrated grinding solutions are now also offered for other sectors, such as industrial minerals, mining, alternative fuels, building materials and energy.
The extremely robust QDK high-performance separator was designed in the mid-1980s. The development of the cross-flow rotary basket separator was decisive for the increasing demands on product fineness and selectivity. The 3rd generation separator called QDK separator is now on the market, which is used for a wide range of applications and can often exceed the fineness requirements.
Supplementary systems and units, such as the powder cooler or the grinding ball sorting machine called “Sorter”, have been added to the product portfolio to make the grinding process even more energy-efficient. For Christian Pfeiffer, it is essential to apply its detailed knowledge of the grinding process to make it increasingly sustainable and energy-saving, including increasing digitalization. In the 1990s, turnkey plants were increasingly delivered all over the world. The design of complete grinding plants with individual requirements in particular meets the customer requirements of our time.
The Competence Center has recently been rejuvenated and has moved into a new hall, giving it space for further expansion. The competence center has a pilot plant and a laboratory. It also houses the new roller press, which is used both for testing customer material and for optimizing the system. The roller press (high-pressure roller press) is used where large quantities of product need to be ground in an energy-efficient manner. The two counter-rotating rollers of the roller press exert very high pressure on the material, which effectively crushes the particles or, alternatively, introduces microcracks into the material for subsequent crushing.
The editor-in-chief of ZKG CEMENT LIME GYPSUM, Dr. Petra Strunk, learned more about this from Hendrik Kruse, Head of the Competence center at Christian Pfeiffer Maschinenfabrik GmbH.
Hendrik Kruse: The laboratory in its general form has existed at Christian Pfeiffer for over 20 years. At the beginning of 2024, we merged the new technical center and the old laboratory into one location, which we now call together as the competence center. The competence center consists of two areas, the laboratory and the pilot plant. The pilot plant is in turn divided into four sub-categories: the roller press, a classic ball mill, currently two separators - one is for ultra-fine grinding and the second, which we are currently have implemented, comes from the cement sector. It is a classic third-generation classifier, which we have installed successfully to the mill. We used to do a lot of work in the classic cement sector, but today we are adding more and more recycling and industrial materials. Back then, we had a fairly small technical center with lower capacity utilization, but today we are using the new competence center intensively again. In addition to the ball mill and the two classifiers, the main focus is on the roller press. A total of 3 employees works here in the competence center.
Hendrik Kruse: The competence center was created because we wanted to expand into the industrial minerals market and our customers demanded an initial evaluation of the processing of their material with our systems. That’s how this competence center came about. But the cement industry also makes use of this test facility. The competence center has enabled us to expand our range of services.
Hendrik Kruse: On the one hand, we carry out customer trials; the customer wants to test the grindability of their products. This allows us to determine process parameters that can then be transferred to our large machines. The customer receives a test report with all the values. Of course, we then use the values to design the grinders and separators accordingly, i.e. upscaling to the corresponding industrially interesting system size takes place.
Hendrik Kruse: We put the roller press into operation at our competence center last year. We are starting with internal trials. We now want to bring the industrial roller press onto the market more intensively and continuously, i.e. we want to test the machine thoroughly we want to test modifications on the roller press that we can later on implement in the industrial scale plant.
Hendrik Kruse: Originally, the roller press was mainly used in the cement sector. The lower CO2 footprint also plays a role here. Roller presses in combination with ball mills is a way to make the grinding of cement clinker more efficient. This gave rise to the idea of doing the same for other industrial sectors, e.g. industrial minerals. There is currently great interest in alternative, CO2-reduced hydraulic active substances as a replacement for classic cement clinker. That is why we are currently working intensively on the grindability of these materials.
Hendrik Kruse: There are two main areas. Firstly, the internal tests to drive forward the further development of our own machines. The second focus is on customer inquiries about the grindability of industrial minerals, for example, where we can test the products in our competence center and determine characteristic values such as the specific grinding energy.
Hendrik Kruse: Mainly from the industrial minerals sector, such as limestone, fly ash and slag. Recently, we have also received more inquiries from the cement industry.
Hendrik Kruse: The laboratory is a physical laboratory, i.e. grindability tests according to Bond or Zeisel are carried out here. In addition, sieve analyses, density determination and particle size analyses are carried out here. One focus of activity is currently grindability tests according to Bond for industrial minerals. Basically, the laboratory provides values for the competence center, for the design of machines, but also for warranties during commissioning.
