Displaying items by tag: Denmark

Denmark: FLSmidth’s 2021 full-year sales were US$2.66bn, up by 6.8% year-on-year from US$2.99bn in 2020. The group had previously forecast sales of US$2.42 – 2.57bn in its guidance for the year. Its EBITA margin was 5.9%, in the upper end of the company’s guidance of 5 – 6%. The company said that the result included costs of acquiring Thyssenkrupp’s mining business.

Denmark: Aalborg Portland Cement says that the market ‘warmly welcomed’ its new FUTURECEM calcined clay cement in 2021. The product has reached its sales expectations for the year and is now nearly sold out for 2022. The company says that its plan to ramp up FUTURECEM production to replace 50% of grey cement production at its Rørdal cement plant is on track.

Parent company Cementir Holding says that the success of FUTURECEM rests on four pillars, namely its suitability for intended applications, targeted communication, close dialogue with concrete producers and the entire value chain and strategic partnerships with leading construction clients. It said “The lesson learned is that the market needs thorough information about new products and its industrialisation to rely on and implement them in place of conventional products.” The group added that its experience in Denmark paves the way for limestone calcined clay technology rollouts in other markets in line with its sustainable roadmap towards 2030.

Mexico/Denmark: Cemex and 3D printing construction company Cobod International have launched D.fab, a range of admixtures which enable builders to use ordinary concrete in 3D printing. The partners say that the products eliminate the need for expensive specialised mortars. Power2Build implemented the admixtures in concrete to print a whole house in Luanda, Angola, in early December 2021.

Cemex’s executive vice president sustainability, commercial and operations development Juan Romero said “The introduction of this revolutionary 3D printing system is a testament to our customer-centric mindset and relentless focus on continuous innovation and improvement. Working together with Cobod, we have developed an experience for customers that is superior to anything that has been provided in the past,” said “Our innovation efforts position us at the forefront of new technologies that contribute to building a better future.”

Denmark: FLSmidth has appointed Mikko Keto as its incoming chief executive officer (CEO), with effect from the start of 2022. It follows the resignation of Thomas Schulz. He will leave the company for an external role at the end of 2021.

Keto joined FLSmidth in January 2021 as the president of the mining division. He previously worked for Metso as the president for its mineral services and pumps business area. His prior roles for Metso include Senior Vice President of Spare Parts, Senior Vice President of Performance Services, President of Automation Services and Vice President of Flow Control Services. He also served as a member of the company’s executive team. Earlier in his career, Keto was Head of Sales for the maintenance business unit at KONE Corporation and held senior management and sales positions at Nokia Networks. He holds a master’s degree in economics from the Helsinki School of Economics.

Outgoing CEO Schulz joined FLSmidth in 2013. The company credited him with transforming its model from a predominately capital project organisation to one with more of a focus on service and aftermarket. His tenure has also seen the engineering company pivot towards digital products and those supporting sustainability trends in the cement and mining industries.

It’s been a good week for carbon capture in cement production with new projects announced in France and Poland.

The first one is a carbon capture and utilisation (CCU) collaboration between Vicat and Hynamics, a subsidiary of energy-provider Groupe EDF. The Hynovi project will see an integrated unit for capturing CO₂ and producing methanol installed 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 oxy-fuel 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 setup is planning to manufacture over 0.2Mt/yr of methanol or about a quarter of France’s national requirement. 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. Vicat’s decision to choose its Montalieu-Vercieu plant for this project is also interesting since it started using a CO₂ntainer system supplied by UK-based Carbon8 Systems there on an industrial scale in November 2020. This system uses captured CO₂ from the plant’s flue gas emissions to carbonate cement-plant dust and produce aggregate.

The second new project is a pilot carbon capture and storage (CCS) pilot by HeidelbergCement at its Górażdże cement plant in Poland. This project is part of the wider Project ACCSESS, a consortium led by Sintef Energi in Norway that aims to cut carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) costs and to link CO₂-emitters from mainland Europe to storage fields in the North Sea. The cement plant part in Poland will test an enzyme-based capture method using waste heat at the plant. Another part of the project will look at how the captured CO₂ can then be transported to the Northern Lights storage facility in Norway including the regulatory aspects of cross-border CO₂ transport. ACCSESS started in May 2021 and is scheduled to end in April 2025. It has a budget of around Euro18m with Euro15m contributed by the European Union (EU) Horizon 2020 fund.

HeidelbergCement also says that the second stage of its LEILAC (Low Emissions Intensity Lime And Cement) project at the Hannover cement plant is part of ACCSESS, with both testing of the larger-scale Calix technology to capture CO₂ and the connected transport logistics and bureaucracy to actually get it to below the North Sea. That last point about Calix is timely given that US-based Carbon Direct purchased a 7% stake in Calix in mid-September 2021 for around US$18m. Whilst on the topic of carbon capture and HeidelbergCement don’t forget that the group’s first full-scale carbon capture unit at Norcem’s Brevik cement plant, using Aker Solution’s amine solvent capture technology, is scheduled for commissioning in September 2024. Another carbon capture unit is planned for Cementa’s Slite plant in 2030 but the proposed capture method has not been announced.

Other recent developments in carbon capture at cement plants include Aalborg Portland Cement’s plan to capture and store CO₂ as part of the Project Greensand consortium. The overall plan here 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 though, with an Energy Technology Development and Demonstration Program application to the Danish government pending. However, the Danish Parliament decided in December 2021 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. How and when Aalborg Portland Cement fits in is mostly unknown 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 also part of the Project Greensand consortium. Finally, also in September 2021, Chart Industries subsidiary Sustainable Energy Solutions announced that it had selected FLSmidth to help adapt and commercialise its Cryogenic Carbon Capture carbon capture and storage (CCS) system for the global cement industry.

All of this tells the cynics in the audience that a large international climate change meeting is coming up very soon. Most cement companies will likely want some good news to show off when the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) dominates the media agenda in November 2021. Other observations to point out include that none of the projects above are full-scale industrial carbon capture installations, most of them are consortiums of one sort of another and that they are all subsidised or want to be. While hydrogen and CO₂ networks get built this seems inevitable. Yet, we’re not at the stage where cement companies just order carbon capture units from a supplier, like they might a new clinker cooler or silo, without the need for long lists of partners. When this changes then carbon capture looks set to flourish.

On a final note, the UK is currently experiencing a shortage of commercially-used CO₂. The reasons for this have nothing to do with the cement industry. Yet consider the constant doom-and-gloom about record global CO₂ emissions and the sheer amount of effort going into reducing this by the projects mentioned above and others. Life has a sense of humour at times.

For a view on the CO₂ sequestration permitting process in the US look out for the an article by Ralph E Davis Associates, in the forthcoming October 2021 issue of Global Cement Magazine

US/Denmark: Chart Industries subsidiary Sustainable Energy Solutions has chosen FLSmidth to help adapt and commercialise its Cryogenic Carbon Capture carbon capture and storage (CCS) system for the global cement industry. The system captures and stores CO₂ from flue gas as a liquid. FLSmidth says that it will use its global reach and process knowledge to accelerate the commercialisation of Cryogenic Carbon Capture and optimise its design for cement plants. It believes the technology can cut 90% of process CO₂ emissions at half the cost and energy consumption of current CCS processes.

FLSmidth cement president Carsten Riisberg Lund said “The cement industry is pursuing all options to reduce its environmental footprint, and CCS is a necessary technology to achieve this goal. Through this agreement with Chart, we lay the foundation for the scale-up and deployment of Cryogenic Carbon Capture technology with our customers. The technology developed by Chart is expected to become the most competitive at scale.” He added “This agreement is a significant leap forward in our joint efforts to enable our customers to reduce their environmental footprint.”

Sweden: Cementa plans to restrict its exports to the Baltic countries and Denmark. Finwire News has reported that the subsidiary of Germany-based HeidelbergCement is enacting the measure in order to focus its cement supply on its Swedish customers.

Denmark: Aalborg Portland Cement will begin construction of a carbon capture and storage (CCS) system at its Rørdal, North Jutland, cement plant. It will collaborate with Project Greensand CCS consortium partners to store the captured CO2 in drained oilfields below the North Sea. The company estimates that the Danish part of the North Sea has 16Gt of CO2 storage capacity, out of 300Gt under all EU waters. The endeavour aims to help Denmark to realise its targeted 70% reduction of CO2 emissions by 2030.

Research and development director Jesper Sand-Damtoft said “The establishment of capture facilities, transformation from carbon to gas and transport to the North Sea all require great investments from a business such as ours, and the realisation of the climate potential thus depends greatly on financial support.”

India: Denmark-based FLSmidth has agreed with Germany-based ThyssenKrupp to exclude the latter’s mining activities in India from the final deal in its acquisition of ThyssenKrupp Mining. This reduces the total cost of the transaction by 14% to Euro280m from Euro325m. FLSmidth said that the exclusion of the Indian business will not affect the transfer of its key intellectual property and technologies to the supplier as part of the overall transaction.

Denmark: 29 consortium members, including Aalborg Portland Cement, Aker Carbon Capture and INEOS, have signed up to phase two of the Greensand carbon capture and storage pilot project. Proof of concept planning is now underway with a potential start date of around late 2021 subject to securing funding from the government’s Energy Technology Development and Demonstration Program. If successful an offshore injection pilot is scheduled for late 2022.

A majority of the Danish Parliament decided in December 2020 to set aside a special funding pool to support a CO2 storage pilot project, aiming to investigate the reservoir-CO₂ interaction in the Danish North Sea. This pilot project, if designed correctly, could form the basis for a decision, to enable CO₂ storage by 2025.

Mads Weng Gade, Head of Country, Denmark and Commercial Director INEOS Energy said, “We are taking this step by step. We now have the consortium in place, and if we are successful in receiving ongoing support from the Danish Government and advisory board, Greensand will be able to take another important step forward in supporting the Danish Climate Strategy.”