Controlling the calcination process in industrial cement kilns is of particular importance because it affects fuel consumption, pollutant emission and the final cement quality. Therefore, understanding the mechanisms of flow and transport phenomena in the calciner is important for efficient cement production. The main physico-chemical processes taking place in the calciner are coal combustion and the strongly endothermic calcination reaction of the raw materials. In this paper a numerical model and a parametric study are presented of the flow and transport processes taking place in an industrial calciner. The numerical model is based on the solution of the Navier-Stokes equations for the gas flow, and on Lagrangean dynamics for the discrete particles. All necessary mathematical models were developed and incorporated into a computational fluid dynamics model with the influence of turbulence simulated by a two-equation (k-epsilon) model. Distributions of fluid velocities, temperatures and concentrations of the reactants and products as well as the trajectories of particles and their interaction with the gas phase are calculated. The results of the present parametric study allow estimations to be made and conclusions to be drawn that help in the optimization of a given calciner. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.