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Congratulations to Lafarge France for launching the first calcined clay cement unit in Europe. The subsidiary of Holcim says that the unit, based at the integrated Saint-Pierre-la-Cour cement plant, is the first of its kind on the continent. It is using the company’s proprietary proximA Tech technology and will produce up to 500,000t/yr of cement in its ECOPlanet range. The operation is also powered with biomass alternative fuels and uses a waste recovery system to further drive down overall CO₂ emissions. Once production ramps-up the producer expects that 30% of cement from the Saint-Pierre-la-Cour plant will be from the ECOPlanet range by 2024.

The investment at Saint-Pierre-la-Cour was Euro40m. Holcim is also producing calcined clay cement at its La Malle plant in France. It received an investment of Euro6m in 2022 to produce low-carbon cements. Together, both plants are aiming to produce over 2Mt/yr of calcined clay cement by 2024. As is usual for these kinds of projects, the French government partly funded the clay calcination unit at Saint-Pierre-la-Cour as part of the ‘France Relance’ scheme investing in large-scale decarbonisation and energy efficiency initiatives.

Calcined clay cements in Europe aren’t exactly new, but Holcim’s new unit in France does appear to be the first full-scale line located at a cement plant. Research by OneStone Consulting, for example, reckons that the first flash activated clay unit expressly set up to supply the cement sector was commissioned in 1995 in Toulouse, France. More recently, Hoffmann Green Cement inaugurated its 50,000t/yr pilot plant at Bournezeau in France in 2018. This site produces cements made from flash calcined clay and blast furnace slag, although it is unclear how demand for the different products varies. A new 0.25Mt/yr plant in the Vendée department was scheduled for commissioning in the second half of 2022. Another 0.25Mt/yr plant in Dunkirk is expected to be commissioned in the second half of 2024.

Cementir Group launched its calcined clay cement product FUTURECEM in Denmark in 2021 with production via a pilot plant. It then extended this to the Benelux and French cement markets in 2022. As part of its industrial plan for 2021 - 2023 it was planning to build a clay calcination unit to support the growth of FutureCem. FLSmidth revealed in June 2021 that it had won a contract to build a 400t/day clay calcination unit for Vicat’s Xeuilley integrated cement plant. The deal was worth around Euro27m and commissioning is scheduled for 2023.

Firstly, it is interesting to see a focus on France for some of the projects above. The presence of Lafarge’s technical centre in Lyon may explain the interest for that company. However, Hoffmann Green Cement and Vicat are also active in the field. It is worth noting that France also holds a busy secondary cementitious material market with standalone operators including Ecocem, Cem’In’Eu and Hoffmann Green Cement. Secondly, despite the early start, clay calcination for cement is currently more active outside of Europe. In Africa, for example, there is at least one live full production line and a number of other projects on the way. Various other pilots and projects are also happening elsewhere around the world, often in conjunction with the limestone calcined clay cement (LC3) initiative. Where calcined clay cement production in Europe goes from here is uncertain at present as it is one solution among many for lower carbon cement products in the future. Yet, the projects that have made it so far to the commercial scale will be watched closely by the companies that have invested in them - and their competitors.

Pakistan: Balochistan's local government minister has called for the cancellation of the allotment of a large area of land to a cement plant in Hub, adding that he would take the matter to court. Mohammad Saleh Bhootani said the Mines and Minerals Development Department had allotted 18,200 hectares of land that he says belonged to the people of Hub and Lasbela districts.

The allotted land comprises mountains, agriculture lands, hundreds of villages, farms and graveyards, he said, arguing that there was no justification for allotting such a vast area to a cement plant. Bhootani warned locals that fences would soon be erected around the site, forcing those that live there out of their homes. He urged Chief Minister Abdul Qudoos Bizenjo to “show mercy on the poor people of the area and cancel the allotment.” The minister said that if the allotment was not cancelled, he and the people of the area would take legal action.

The parliamentary leader of the Balochistan National Party-Mengal, Naseer Ahmed Shahwani, condemned the allotment and demanded the government withdraw its decision. 'If such practices continue, what will be the future of Balochistan?' he wondered.

Kenya: Holcim has announced the successful completion of the largest 3D-printed affordable housing to date through 14Trees, its joint venture with British International Investment, the UK’s Development Finance Institution (DFI) and impact investor. The 3D printing of the 10 housing units in Kenya’s Mvule Gardens project was made possible with TectorPrint, Holcim’s 3D printing ink product, produced in Kenya for the first time. The project’s advanced sustainability profile has attained an EDGE Advanced sustainable design certification by IFC, the World Bank's development finance institution, which recognises resource-efficient buildings with the potential to be zero-carbon. It is the first time a 3D-printed housing project has attained this certification.

François Perrot, managing director of 14Trees, said “With 3D printing, you can solve two problems at once. You can build faster and with better cost efficiency, which will help make affordable housing a reality for the majority. In addition, you can build with less materials, which preserves the resources of the planet for future generations.”

Miljan Gutovic, Region Head for Europe at Holcim, added “I am very proud of the work done by 14Trees in Africa, where their innovations in 3D printing technology are accelerating affordable and sustainable building. I look forward to 14Trees replicating these successes in Europe and other parts of Africa in the very near future.”

Austria: RHI Magnesita has invested in Australia-based MCi Carbon as part of a long-term strategic cooperation agreement to research and develop technologies to decarbonise the production of refractories. MCi Carbon sells a mineral carbonation process that creates a range of low-carbon embodied materials, including calcium and magnesium carbonate by carbonating minerals in by-products of industrial processes. RHI Magnesita intends to use this process to reduce its Scope 1 emissions from mineral processing during its refractory production process.

Stefan Borgas, the chief executive officer of RHI Magnesita, said "This partnership could become a breakthrough towards decarbonising the industry. It fits seamlessly with RHI Magnesita's ambitious sustainability strategy." He added "We still have a long way to go but our early-stage investment and the clear intention of a long-term collaboration make this day so memorable. Together with the like-minded team from MCi we will pave the way for a greener industry."

So far, both companies have worked together on CO₂ mitigation studies, mineral carbonisation feedstock assessments and techno-economic analyses at RHI Magnesita's sites around the world. In a next step, the companies' joint efforts will focus on industrial scale-up, expected to start in 2024 with the set-up of a demonstration plant by MCi at Newcastle in Australia, supported by the Australian government.

Philippines: Century Peak Cement Manufacturing has started distributed its cement products to the Visayas region. Its blended hydraulic and ordinary Portland cement product received quality standard certification from the Department of Trade and Industry in January 2023.

Century Peak Cement operates a plant at Pinamungajan in Cebu with associated limestone reserves. The unit has its own pier.

France: Holcim has opened what it says is the first calcined clay unit in Europe at its Saint-Pierre-la-Cour cement plant. The production line uses the company’s proximA Tech process to produce up to 0.5Mt/yr of products in the ECOPlanet range. The unit is powered with 100% biomass-based alternative fuels and uses waste heat recovery systems to make production “nearly carbon free and ultra-efficient.”

Miljan Gutovic, Region Head Europe for Holcim, said “The opening of the first calcined clay cement production line in Europe is another milestone in our mission to decarbonise building. We are scaling up our calcined clay cements across all regions by 2025, to advance our ECOPlanet range of low-carbon cement, making low-carbon construction possible at scale.”

The upgrade project received financial support from the French government, as part of the ‘France Relance’ scheme to invest in large-scale decarbonisation and energy efficiency initiatives.

Image by Simon de l'Ouest CC BY-SA 4.0

Bangladesh: The European Union (EU) and Spanish ambassadors and Swiss chargé d'affaires to Bangladesh have formally requested that Bangladeshi authorities lift all restrictions on LafargeHolcim Bangladesh's sale of crushed limestone in the country. The Financial Express newspaper has reported that Bangladeshi court previously ruled in favour of LafargeHolcim Bangladesh's right to sell its crushed limestone 'on the open market' on 5 January 2022. Limestone Importers and Suppliers Group had challenged the legal status of such sales, given that the raw limestone used in LafargeHolcim Bangladesh's produces its crushed limestone production is imported from India.

The Bangladesh government granted LafargeHolcim Bangladesh, a subsidiary of Switzerland-based Holcim, a temporary licence to resume its crushed limestone operations on 27 March 2022. This resulted in protests by local limestone producers.

Pakistan: A court has ordered a report by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) into alleged breaches of emissions rules at Kohat Cement's Kohat Cement plant in Babri Banda, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The Dawn newspaper has reported that alleged dust and chemical emissions from the plant have contributed to a local rise in cases of cancer, asthma and lung diseases, according to complainants.

Residents have filed a petition for contempt proceedings against the EPA and Kohat Cement, as well as local and provincial government authorities. The court previously ordered the EPA to monitor Kohat Cement's emissions in 2018. At that time, it also instructed Kohat Cement to operate its electrostatic precipitators system at all times that cement is being produced. Local residents claim that the plant has continually failed to operate the system.

Cement 2 Zero (C2Z) has officially launched in the UK this week. The project is an industrial scale pilot of the Cambridge Electric Cement (CEC) process. The Materials Processing Institute will lead on this stage with two-year funding of around Euro7m provided by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Partners include the University of Cambridge, Atkins, Balfour Beatty, Brewster Brothers, Celsa Group, Day Aggregates and Tarmac.

CEC’s method uses recycled concrete paste in place of lime-flux in steel recycling. Slag is formed as the steel melts and this is then used in place of clinker to make more cement. This way of making cement cuts out the decarbonisation of limestone step from conventional clinker production. If renewably-sourced electricity is used to power the heating and grinding parts of manufacture, then cement production in this way could potentially cut out most of its CO₂ emissions. The first phase of trial melts by C2Z will be conducted by the Materials Processing Institute using a 250kg induction furnace and this will be scaled up to 6t in an electric arc furnace (EAF). Later, industrial scale melts will be tested in Celsa Steel's EAF in Cardiff, Wales.

CEC is taking a similar approach to HeidelbergCement with its research into using recycled concrete paste. However, HeidelbergCement says it is using the paste to help capture CO₂ in an enforced carbonation step it is testing at cement plants. It too though wants to create a secondary cementitious material (SCM) afterwards. There are also links here to construction and demolition waste and electric cement kilns as covered by Global Cement Weekly previously. The latter is different with regards to what CEC is doing because it is recycling concrete waste to produce an SCM (slag) rather than using an electrically powered kiln to make clinker from limestone. Coolbrook, VTT and the like have had to build electric kilns effectively from scratch or adapt technology from elsewhere for their approaches whilst CEC appears to be about to use existing EAFs in its industrial scale pilot.

Figure 1: Projection of how the Cambridge Electric Cement production process could be used at scale in the UK. Source: UK FIRES. Click to view larger version.

CEC’s forecast of how its process could be used at scale in the UK can be seen above in Figure 1. If the majority of the country’s steel scrap was recycled in this fashion each year then 2.4Mt/yr of CEC cement could be produced. This would represent a quarter of the c10Mt of cement sales reported by the MPA in 2021. Assuming the EAFs were powered by renewables then this could reduce the cement sector’s CO₂ emissions significantly. Although it would still leave the industry looking for other decarbonisation routes for the other three-quarters of cement demand.

C2Z and CEC offer a novel spin on cement production by recycling concrete waste, using an electrical heating step and dodging the process emissions associated with normal ordinary Portland cement (OPC) clinker production. If it did progress to a commercial stage then it would see a continued relationship between steel and cement producers. Currently this is mainly centered around iron and steel slag usage as a SCM. One point of interest here would be how much higher levels of steel recycling and a process like CEC being used regularly would affect existing slag usage as an SCM. It doesn’t look like CEC could solve the cement sector’s CO₂ emission problem all on its own but it could certainly make a difference if it progressed to a commercial stage. As ever with cement sector decarbonisation there appear to be a range of options available to producers.

US: The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Carbon Storage Assurance Facility Enterprise (CarbonSAFE) initiative has awarded funding of US$8.9m to Heidelberg Materials North America to study the subsurface geology for suitability for the storage of carbon dioxide at the Mitchell integrated cement plant in Indiana. The proposed project will geologically characterise several prospective reservoirs under the Mitchell plant for storage of more than 50Mt of CO₂ over a 30-year timeframe.

The award, which is managed by the National Energy Technology Laboratory, will be issued to the Illinois State Geological Survey at the University of Illinois (ISGS) as the prime contractor, with the company acting as a technical and industrial partner. Heidelberg Materials is contributing about US$1.5m in funding while ISGS will be contributing approximately US$0.6m for a project total of US$11.1m. The funding was part of a DOE initiative that generated nearly US$125m in funding for 10 projects to characterise suitability for carbon storage across the US.

Heidelberg Materials’ Mitchell cement plant is being upgraded with a new production line. Full production on the new line is anticipated to start in early 2023.