Developing nations are also battling with global warming. Therefore, optimizing industrial energy is a must and the de-carbonization in a cement production in the developing countries should be courage. This research work seek ways of optimizing energy recovery and exergy recovery of a cement clinker cooler. This will not only improved plant performance but also reduces cost of cement production. Nigeria (Developing country) cement plant used for this research has production capacity of 6000 tons of clinker per day, and with an energy mix of natural gas and heavy fuel oil. Energy recovery and exergy recovery in a clinker cooler was a major factor in optimizing clinker production and cement grinding process, the running clinker cooler has an energy recovery was less than 50% which was low despite the high energy efficiency of clinker cooler which was above 90%. The exergy recovery of the clinker which was less than 45%, which was also observed to be lower when compared to exergy efficiency of the running clinker cooler which was 63%. Improving the mass flow rate of the air supplied into the system between 20 to 25% can possibly reduce the heat losses due to uncooled clinker leaving the system, improve combustion process, improve cement grinding process and improve cement quality.

Keywords: Energy recovery, Exergy recovery, Clinker cooler, Mass Flow Rate and Clinker Temperature