Cement is an energy-intensive industry, in which the electric energy consumed by the grinding circuit accounts for more than 60% of the total electric energy consumed, accounting for the majority of the manufacturing cost. The future requirement for the cement industry is to reduce grinding energy consumption and kiln CO2 emissions. In recent years, the production of composite cement has been increasing for reasons related to process economy, energy conservation, ecology (mainly reducing CO2 emissions), resource protection and product quality/diversity. The most important properties of cement, such as strength and workability, are affected by its specific surface area and the fineness and width of particle size distribution. These can be modified to a certain extent by the equipment used in the grinding circuit, including its configuration and control.

In the past 100 years, the multi-chamber ball mill and air separator have been the main process equipment in the clinker grinding circuit. It is used for grinding cement raw materials (raw meal) (i.e. limestone, clay, iron ore), cement clinker and cement additives (i.e. limestone, slag, pozzolanic ash) and coal. Multi-chamber ball mill has relatively low efficiency in reducing size and high unit energy consumption (kWh/t). Typical unit energy consumption of cement grinding is 30 kWh/t. The Barmac crusher is used as a pre-mill in the cement grinding circuit running with the ball mill to reduce the unit energy consumption in the grinding stage of the ball mill.

Vertical roller mills have a lower specific energy consumption than tumbling mills and require less space per unit and capacity at lower investment costs. Vertical roller mills are developed to work as air-swept grinding mills. Roller mills are operated with throughput capacities of more than 300 t/h of cement raw mix.