Turnkey active lime line in China: jaw and cone crushing, vertical preheater, rotary kiln and vertical cooler — full plant for steel and chemical users.

Customer & Feedstock

The customer operates in China's non-metallic minerals market and supplies quicklime to downstream users across steel, building materials and chemical processing. As a turnkey project, DMTC's scope covered the complete production line — from raw limestone at the quarry face to conditioned quicklime at the finished-materials stack — designed for continuous operation with low maintenance intensity.

Feed is local limestone. Quality control targets (reactivity, low over-burnt fraction) are set by the steel and chemical customers on the offtake side, which makes burning uniformity the governing design requirement of the whole line.

Challenges & Requirements

• Fuel economy was the first ask. Calcination heat dominates a lime plant's operating cost. The design answer is a vertical preheater upstream of the kiln: kiln exhaust preheats (and partially calcines) the feed, cutting the fuel the kiln itself must supply.
• Burning uniformity at continuous duty. Over-burnt lime wastes fuel and under-burnt lime fails specification; both drift when feed size or moisture varies. The crushing circuit was therefore specified to hold a tight feed-size band into the preheater.
• Heat recovery on both ends. The vertical cooler recovers heat from the finished lime to preheat combustion air — closing the thermal loop at the discharge end the way the preheater does at the feed end.
• Low maintenance intensity. The customer asked for a line that a normal plant crew can run and maintain without specialist support, which shaped the component selection: proven, serviceable units over exotic ones.

Solution & Equipment

The line is a classic preheater–kiln–cooler flow, delivered turnkey:

Jaw crusher (SC series, SC80–SC304S) — primary crush of raw limestone.

Cone crusher (HPB / Symons series) — secondary crush; holds the feed-size band the preheater needs.

Vertical preheater (cyclone class, project-sized) — preheats and partially calcines the feed using kiln exhaust.

Rotary kiln (Ø4.0×60 m – Ø6.2×87 m class) — final calcination to active lime.

Vertical cooler (project-sized) — cools the finished lime and preheats combustion air.

Vibrating screen (YA / YT series) — grading of crushed feed.

Belt conveyor (DT / TC / ST series) — transfer between stations.

Process notes. The thermal loop is the point of the design: exhaust heat is used once in the preheater (feed side) and again in the vertical cooler (discharge side), so the kiln burners carry a reduced load.

Design Results

• Design output within the 50–1,200 t/d DMTC active-lime platform
• Preheater + vertical cooler thermal loop on both ends of the kiln
• Turnkey handover: the customer operates a complete plant, not a set of machines

Why DMTC

• Turnkey accountability — one supplier owns the interface between every station, so the thermal balance and the feed-size window are guaranteed as a system, not per machine.
• A lime platform built across the range — from 50 to 1,200 t/d, the same engineering family the customer can expand with later.
• Proven kiln engineering behind the hot end of the line.

Related Products

Rotary Kiln System · SC Series Jaw Crusher · HPB Cone Crusher · YA Vibrating Screen