CCS: CO2 capture & storage in cement

Global attention will soon focus on industrial decarbonisation during the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), which will take place in November 2021 in Glasgow, Scotland, UK. Some cement producers have moved ahead of the curve, with a number of longstanding CO₂ capture and storage projects and a burst of new ones announced in September 2021. Here, Global Cement rounds up those projects currently in progress.

The economic, technical and logistical challenges of CO₂ capture utilisation and/or storage (CCU/S) have proved hard for widespread adoption beyond industrial pilots and curiosities, despite the rise of global CO₂ reduction targets since the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. This means that, as COP26 approaches, there are still no large-scale clinker production lines in operation anywhere in the world that capture all of their process CO₂ emissions. The few that do capture some of their emissions are either running pilot projects or are doing so on a partial scale.

Producers have not been lazy though. They are well aware that the cement industry contributes about 8% of global CO₂ emissions. However, around 60% of this arises from process emissions when limestone is calcined to produce clinker. As the process emissions are intrinsic to manufacturing Ordinary Portland Cement, producers have, to date, generally focused on tackling the easier-to-abate emissions from burning fossil fuels either directly or to generate electricity, or by lowering the clinker factor of their products.

Work on CCU/S by the cement sector has gradually gathered momentum over the past decade as research has turned into pilots. A few of these have turned into larger installations. Almost all have benefitted from research funding or government subsidies. To date, the latter have only captured a portion of the CO₂ emissions from the kilns they source flue gas from. There is typically too much CO₂ for them to use. Hence, there is now focus on gas pipelines to take CO₂ away to sequestration sites, as well as new capture projects associated with hydrogen clusters in Europe and North America. The prize of the first full-scale CCU/S commissioned at a cement plant looks set to be won in September 2024 by the Norcem/HeidelbergCement Brevik plant in Norway when it captures all the CO₂ emissions from one of its two kilns. In the meantime the race continues.

This article will now look at some of the current CCU/S projects in progress in more detail. A longer list is included in Table 1 (see image gallery). Note that many pilot projects have been completed over the past decade. These are not covered in this article.

Norcem Brevik

HeidelbergCement’s Norcem subsidiary in Norway is currently preparing to build its carbon capture and storage (CCS) unit at the Brevik cement plant. Aker Solutions was awarded the Euro50m contract to build the unit in late December 2020 after the Norwegian government confirmed its investment in the project. It will use Aker’s amine solvent scrubbing process to absorb CO₂ from the cement plant’s flue gas.

FLSmidth has also been contracted to conduct modification work at the cement plant by making adjustments to the production process and removing particles from the flue gas. The unit is scheduled to be commissioned in late 2024. At this time around 400,000t/yr of CO₂ will be captured from one of the cement plant’s two production lines.

The CO₂ from Brevik will be sequestered under the North Sea as part of the Norwegian government-backed Northern Lights project. Aker has also won a contract from energy company Equinor in December 2020 to deliver liquefied CO₂ from the cement plant by ship to a receiving terminal in Øygarden, outside Bergen. At this point the CO₂ will be stored intermittently before eventually being injected into subsea geological structures via a subsea pipeline.

LEILAC (Low Emissions Intensity Lime and Cement)

The second stage of the LEILAC (Low Emissions Intensity Lime and Cement) project is preparing to become operational by 2023, with testing to run to 2025. The consortium that runs the scheme chose HeidelbergCement’s Hannover plant in Germany in early 2021 and the demonstration plant’s preliminary front end engineering design (Pre-FEED) report was published in September 2021. The demonstration plant will separate 20% of the plant’s process CO₂ emissions, around 100,000t/yr, and test the technology on a larger scale than the previous pilot at the Lixhe plant in Belgium. The project is using Calix’s direct separation technology that heats the limestone via a special steel reactor and allows ‘pure’ CO₂ to be captured.

Cement and lime producer members of the consortium for the second stage include HeidelbergCement, Lhoist, Cimpor and Cemex. Germany-based cement plant equipment supplier IKN is also one of the partners. The second stage has received Euro16m of funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. An additional Euro18m has been pledged by HeidelbergCement, Cimpor, Lhoist and Calix.

LEILAC is only testing the capture part of CCU/S by demonstrating a technology and process. Any partial or full-scale installation of a Calix direct separation unit at a cement plant would need to have a plan with what to do with the captured CO₂.

CO₂MENT

Holcim’s subsidiaries in North America have been working with Svante and Total on the CO₂MENT project at plants in the US and Canada. The initiative has been testing Svante’s solid sorbent technology. In Canada the partners are working at the Richmond plant in British Colombia. Here, the project has three phases: containment, capture and reuse. The capture phase finished in 2020 with the installation of a pilot Svante capture unit with a capacity of 1t/day. The reuse phase began in early 2021 and will run until 2024. It will study reuse of the captured CO₂ in concrete production, installing a CO₂ liquefaction unit and preparing the business case review for further expansion across the business.

In the US, the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory awarded US$1.5m to a sister project at the LafargeHolcim US lorence plant in Colorado. Similar to the Canadian project the main participants are Svante and Total but with the addition of Oxy Low Carbon Ventures, a subsidiary of Occidental. This project aims to capture 2Mt/yr of CO₂ from the cement plant and to store it underground with the help of oil and gas company Occidental. Following the announcement in September 2020 the project was set to conduct a feasibility study.

Hynovi

Vicat announced a carbon capture and utilisation (CCU) collaboration with Hynamics, a subsidiary of energy-provider Groupe EDF, in September 2021. The Hynovi project will see an integrated unit capture CO₂ to produce methanol at Vicat’s Montalieu-Vercieu cement plant in 2025. It aims to capture 40% of the CO₂ from the kiln exhaust stack at the plant by using an oxyfuel method and installing a 330MW electrolyser to split water into oxygen and hydrogen for different parts of the process.

The CO₂ will then be combined with hydrogen to produce methanol with potential markets in transport, chemicals and construction. The project plans to manufacture over 0.2Mt/yr of methanol, about 25% of the annual requirement of France.

The project was put forward under a call for proposals by the Important Projects of Common European Interest (IPCEI) program. Pre-notification of its participation in the program has been received from the French government and it is currently being evaluated by the European Commission.

Carbon8 Systems

Vicat’s decision to choose its Montalieu-Vercieu plant for Hynovi is interesting, as the plant already uses a CO₂NTAINER system supplied by UK-based Carbon8 Systems on an industrial scale. This system uses captured CO₂ from the plant’s flue gas emissions to carbonate cement-plant dust to produce aggregate. It was the technology’s first commercial deployment and has been operational since November 2020.

Carbon8 uses its Accelerated Carbonation Technology (ACT) process, which uses the captured CO₂ to mineralise various types of residues to create materials such as aggregates for construction. In its first phase of operation, Carbon8 said it would process and convert up to 12,000t of cement bypass dust into construction aggregates. Vicat would then commercially reuse the aggregates in various applications, such as manufacturing lightweight concrete blocks.

Carbon8 Systems’ commercial installation in France follows pilots in the late 2010s with CRH in Ontario, Canada and Hanson in the UK. ACT’s CO₂ capture rate has not been publicised, although laboratory data published in Carbon8’s promotional material suggest around a 14% uptake rate at varying rates of CO₂ concentration.

In June 2021 Carbon8 Systems and FLSmidth signed a technology partnership with further details to be revealed in October 2021.

Cleanker

The Cleanker tested the viability of calcium looping technology for use in cement plants. Tests were scheduled to run for 10 months, with a total actual operating time of one month at most. It was due to end in September 2021 and results are yet to be published. The pilot plant for the project was inaugurated at Buzzi Unicem’s Vernasca cement plant in October 2020. The project ran from October 2017, was due to last four years and had a budget of around Euro9m. The majority of this was contributed by the European Union. Relevant cement industry partners include the German Cement Association (VDZ), IKN and HeidelbergCement’s local subsidiary Italcementi.

Project Greensand

Aalborg Portland Cement announced its CCU/S plans in September 2021 as part of its involvement in the Project Greensand consortium. The overall plan is to explore the technical and commercial feasibility of sequestering CO₂ in depleted oil and gas reservoirs in the Danish North Sea, starting with the Nini West Field. The project is still securing funding, with an Energy Technology Development and Demonstration Program application to the Danish government pending. However, the Danish Parliament decided in December 2020 to set aside a special funding pool to support a CO₂ storage pilot project so this initiative seems to be making progress. If the application is successful, the consortium wants to start work by the end 2021 and then proceed with an offshore injection pilot from late 2022.

Aalborg Portland Cement’s involvement is mostly unknown beyond being a partner but a 0.45Mt/yr capture unit at its Rørdal cement plant is tentatively planned for 2027. There’s also no information on the capture method, although Aker Carbon Capture is part of the Project Greensand consortium.

Project ACCSESS

Another new project announced in September 2021 was a pilot carbon capture and storage (CCS) pilot by HeidelbergCement at its Górażdże plant in Poland. This project is part of the wider Project ACCSESS, a consortium led by Norway’s Sintef Energi, which aims to cut CCU/S costs and to link CO₂-emitters from mainland Europe to storage fields in the North Sea. The cement plant in Poland will test an enzyme-based capture method using waste heat from the plant.

Catch4Climate

The Catch4Climate project said in late 2020 that it had moved into the planning stage of its oxyfuel pilot plant at the Schwenk Zement Mergelstetten plant in Germany. Project partners include four cement companies: Buzzi Unicem’s subsidiary Dyckerhoff, HeidelbergCement, Schwenk Zement and Vicat. The announcement followed the consortium signing a letter of intent with the state’s prime minister and transport minister in Stuttgart.

The consortium intends to build and operate its own demonstration plant on a semi-industrial scale using the oxyfuel process to capture CO₂. A future step will then trial the utilisation of the captured CO₂ to produce so-called ‘reFuels’, climate-neutral synthetic fuels such as kerosene for air traffic, with the help of renewable electrical energy.

Notable hydrogen cluster projects

A number of cement industry related CCU/S projects in Europe have been announced in connection with hydrogen clusters. This was further promoted by the publication of the European Union’s hydrogen strategy in mid-2020, which views hydrogen as an essential step to decarbonising industry and the wider economy. Most of these projects have expressed a desire to use CCU/S at cement plants, but give no detail on how to capture CO₂ at the cement plants.

The Carbon2ProductAustria (C2PAT) project includes Lafarge Zementwerke, OMV, Verbund and Borealis. The project aims to use hydrogen produced by Verbund to allow OMV to transform the captured CO₂ into a range of olefins, fuels and plastics. Borealis would then use some of these products as a feedstock to manufacture plastics. The third stage of this project would see a CCU/S unit built at the Mannersdorf cement plant to capture all of the 0.7Mt/yr of CO₂ emitted. The project was announced in mid-2020.

In August 2020 the Westküste100 green hydrogen project said it had received funding approval from the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs in Germany. The plan is backed by an investment of Euro89m, with Euro30m of this total approved for the project’s launch in August 2020. The initiative intends to produce green hydrogen, transport it in the gas network, use it in industrial processes and to interlink different material cycles within the existing infrastructure. The consortium brings together 10 partners: EDF Deutschland, Holcim Deutschland, OGE, Ørsted Deutschland, Raffinerie Heide, Heide’s municipal utility, Thüga and thyssenkrupp Industrial Solutions, along with the Region Heide development agency and the Westküste University of Applied Sciences. In a later stage of the project, hydrogen from both electrolysis and CO₂ from a cement plant in Schleswig-Holstein will be used in the process. During the initial phase of the Westküste100 project, preparations will be made for converting the Lägerdorf cement plant to an oxyfuel combustion process. In June 2021 the project reported that technical studies looking at the oxyfuel process with thyssenkrupp Industrial Solutions and Linde had been completed at the Lägerdorf cement plant and a general assessment had also been completed.

In February 2021 HeidelbergCement’s UK subsidiary Hanson said that it had joined the HyNet North West consortium. The project, led by Progressive Energy, is being developed by a consortium of organisations in the north-west of England, including Cadent, CF Fertilisers, Eni UK, Essar, INOVYN and the University of Chester. In March 2021 Hanson confirmed that it was preparing a carbon capture and storage (CCS) study at its Padeswood cement plant in Flintshire after it received Euro84m in funding. The study will support a design basis and cost estimate for a carbon capture unit at the cement plant and a connection to the planned HyNet North West CO₂ transport and storage system. Euro46m of the funding came from consortium partners, while Euro38m came from a UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Industrial Decarbonisation Challenge grant.

Cemex and Synhelion

In September 2020 Cemex announced that it was working with Synhelion to develop a solar reactor for cement plants and that the first pilot was planned for 2022. The first part of the project intends to replace fossil fuel use along similar lines to SOLPART (Solar-Heated Reactors for Industrial Production of Reactive Particulates) in France and Heliogen in the US.

However, the announcement also noted that the process CO₂ emissions could be ‘easily’ extracted, as they mix with the heat transfer fluid for the setup’s solar receiver. It then proposed using the captured CO₂ to make synthetic fuels.

Cemex also announced two projects at plants in the US using Department of Energy funding in November 2020 and February 2021 respectively. The first is a feasibility study to assess how Membrane Technology & Research’s membrane separation technique could be used at the Balcones cement plant in New Braunfels, Texas. The second is a pilot using Carbon Clean’s solvent scrubbing process at the Victorville cement plant in California.

CarbonFree SkyMine

CarbonFree, previously known as Skyonic, has a claim to having opened the world’s first commercial carbon capture and utilisation plant across any industry when it opened its SkyMine in 2015. It is certainly the first commercial cement sectorCCU/S unit.

The unit uses flue gas from the neighbouring Capital Aggregates cement plant in San Antonio. It has a CO₂ capture capacity of 75,000t/yr although the company says it captures around 50,000t/yr at present. The unit was intended to capture CO₂ from up to 20% of the cement plant’s flue gas.

The unit makes its own sodium hydroxide (NaOH) via the electrolytic chlor-alkali process, a process that also liberates hydrogen gas (H2) and chlorine gas (Cl2). It then reacts flue-gas CO₂ from the cement plant with NaOH to produce sodium bicarbonate (baking soda - NaHCO3) and, separately, hydrogen and chlorine will be combined to produce hydrochloric acid (HCl) and bleach solution (sodium hypochlorite - NaClO). The baking soda, hydrochloric acid and bleach are then sold.

Since opening the SkyMine in 2015, CarbonFree has been attempting to launch its SkyCycle process. Its first SkyCycle plant is currently scheduled for deployment in 2022.

References

1. Company press releases, sustainability reports and websites
2. The Skyonic SkyMine: The future of cement plant carbon capture? Global Cement Magazine, May 2015.
3. Plaza, MG; Martinez S; Rubiere F. CO₂ Capture, Use, and Storage in the Cement Industry: State of the Art and Expectations. Energies 2020, 13, 5692.