At Votorantim's Hasanoğlan Cement Factory, the pre-heater and cooling areas of the clinker production line are fitted with air cannons that are not Martin Engineering devices. They were fitted when the plant was inaugurated more than 10 years ago and had reached the end of their economic life and not working with sufficient performance.

Frequent malfunctions and the high cost of spare parts for shocks were the biggest problems encountered. Even though the factory's technical managers invested in new air cannons in the most critical locations they also wanted to reuse the old air cannons in a cost-effective way.

As a result of a field inspection carried out by the Martin Engineering technical and sales team, Votorantim was offered the opportunity to upgrade their old air cannon tanks using Martin® Passport Retrofit Valves.

The Passport system allows older air cannon tanks from any manufacturer to be upgraded to deliver the performance of the Martin's Hurricane air cannon, the highest level of air cannon technology available.

A simple, 8-bolt attachment enables the valve assembly to be retrofitted to existing air cannons, providing a cost-effective and low-waste solution that's easy to maintain.

Two old type air cannons at the critical kiln inlet were upgraded to Hurricane models, each being fitted with a Passport Retrofit Valve. By doing this, air cannons that had reached the end of their service life were upgraded with a very low investment cost.

The installation of Passport successfully got rid of the frequent malfunction problems being experienced with the old air cannon. At the same time, Votorantim has the same ease of use of spare parts as the existing Martin air shocks. The team at Hasanoğlan plans to upgrade more of its old air cannons in the kiln inlet and cooler areas using Passport Retrofit Valves.