Displaying items by tag: Product

Mexico: Cemex intends for its Vertua products to account for over half of all of its cement and concrete sales by 2025. The Vertua range was launched in 2020 and its cement and concrete products accounted for 34% and 31% of total sales respectively in the first quarter of 2022. Vertua products have a CO₂ reduction of at least 25% compared to traditional cements. For concrete the CO₂ reduction ranges from 30% up to a full net-zero option.

References for Vertua concrete include La Marseillaise, a skyscraper in Marseille, the HS2 high-speed railway in London, the Querétaro-Irapuato highway in Mexico, the San Diego State University stadium in California and the Pereira shopping centre in Colombia. Vertua cement and concrete products have been launched in Colombia, Croatia, the Czech Republic, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, France, Germany, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, the Philippines, Poland, Puerto Rico, Spain, the US, the UK and the UAE.

US: Argos USA has launched its new Portland Limestone Cement (PLC) brand EcoStrong.The company says the its will complete its conversion to 100% EcoStrong PLC cement production across all facilities in 2023.Its Roberta, Alabama cement plant and Atlanta, Georgia grinding plant will transition by mid-2022, while its Newberry, Florida cement plant will transition by October 2022.Argos USA plans to use EcoStrong cement at all of its Eastern US ready-mix concretesites by mid-2022.

Cement technical director Steve Wilcox said“I am excited to be part of Argos’ brand announcement for our PLC Type IL product. EcoStrong PLC encompasses everything we have worked for over the past decade, to offer a high-quality product with lower embodied carbon, which contributes to the ultimate goal of decarbonising across our operations. Our PLC product is engineered to reduce the harmful effects on the environment and perform similar to or better than our ordinaryPortland cement (OPC) Type I/II. EcoStrong PLC empowers our customers, specifiers, architects, and engineers to design and execute their projects with resilience and sustainability.”

Germany: Fagus-GreCon has launched its new GreCon Intelligent Extinguishing Module (IEM) for its existing spark extinguishing systems.Its sensorsoffer integrated early wear recognition and automatically report very small leaks to cement plants’ control centres.

India: Tamilnadu Cements plans to set up a new grinding plant in Alangulam, Tamil Nadu. The Hindu newspaper has reported that the unit will serve the nearby Arasu cement plant and double its cement capacity to 0.56Mt/yr from 0.28Mt/yr. It will cost US$5.22m and produce the company's Valimai cement.

Tamilnadu Cements has sold 59,000t of Valimai cement to date.

Switzerland: Holcim recorded net sales of US$6.75bn in the first quarter of 2022, up by 20% year-on-year from US$5.62bn in the first quarter of 2021. The group’s recurring earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBIT) rose by 16% to US$643m from US$553m. The company has upgraded its outlook 2022 to a forecast of full-year net sales growth of at least 10%.

CEO Jan Jenisch said “I am very encouraged by the record start of the year, setting a solid foundation to our Strategy 2025 – Accelerating Green Growth.”

The first quarter of 2022 brought four new bolt-on acquisitions in addition to the group’s conclusion of its US$1.35bn Malarkey Roofing Products acquisition. The company says that it remains actively engaged in supporting humanitarian efforts in Ukraine.

Holcim has also published its industry-first Climate Report 2022. The report details the company’s progress towards achieving its sustainability targets under the four pillars of its Strategy 2025 – Accelerating Green Growth. Under the Accelerating Growth pillar, Holcim reached a total of 15 markets with its ECOPlanet reduced-CO₂ cement range. Under Expanding Solutions & Products, it reduced the proportion of cement sales in its consolidated sales to 57% in 2021 from 60% in 2020. Its other pillars are Leading in Innovation and Sustainability and Delivering Superior Performance. In 2021, the company used 6.6Mt of recycled construction and demolition waste in its products, against a 2050 target of 10Mt.

Chief sustainability and innovation officer Magali Anderson said “On our net-zero journey, we are walking the talk at Holcim, taking clear science-driven action to win the race for climate.”

US: CalPortland has converted production at the 1.3Mt/yr Mojave cement plant in California to its Advancement HS, a Portland limestone cement (PLC) product. The plant will reduce its CO₂ emissions by 10% on a per ton basis. The company said the move supported the Portland Cement Association’s Roadmap to Carbon Neutrality and the industry’s overall efforts to address climate change.

UK: Cemex UK has announced the global launch of its OnPoint coloured cement mortars for off-site and urban architectural applications. The range includes 35 colour palette options.

Europe regional mortars sales manager Mike May said “On heritage projects, we can now accurately colour-match existing mortars for repointing and maintenance work. Our existing buildings account for more than 35% of the world’s energy consumption, so solutions like Cemex OnPoint can significantly contribute to a more efficient built environment and a better future for all.”

Canada: Lafarge Canada has converted its Richmond, British Colombia, cement plant to 100% OneCem Portland limestone cement (PLC) production. OneCem cement’s CO₂ emissions per tonne are 13% below the Canadian PLC average. The Richmond plant has supplied OneCem cement to the Western Canada and US Pacific Northwest customers since 2011. Since that time, it has eliminated 1.18Mt of CO₂ emissions, according to the producer.

President and CEO Brad Kohl said "Collaborating with local government and stakeholders was key to ensuring OneCem PLC’s uptake in the market, and conversion away from traditional high-intensity cement products. As industry leaders, we want to facilitate access to low carbon cements across Canada, and starting with Richmond is a big step towards making that happen."

Poland: The Building Research Institute has issued environmental product declarations (EPDs) for all six cement types produced at its Chełm and Rudniki cement plants and Gdynia grinding plant. The products in question were two CEM I cements, two CEM II Portland fly ash cements, another CEM II cement and a CEM III slag cement. Cemex Poland additionally obtained EPD certification for its Vertua Classic and Vertua Plus concrete products.

Materials director Michał Grys said “For us, product certification is another important step towards sustainable construction and a sustainable future. EPD declarations provide our clients with additional confirmation of the properties of products offered by Cemex Poland. They also improve their chances of obtaining LEED or BREEAM certificates for their investments.”

From the Nordics to the Mediterranean, European countries lead the field in reduced-clinker cement production using supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs). While consumers, faced with ever-greater choice, continue to opt for sustainability, projects to improve existing SCMs and develop new ones have won government backing and have become a matter of serious investment for other heavy industries beside cement. European cement producers’ decisions are steering the course to a world beyond CEM I. Yet, even in Europe, great untapped potential remains.

Companies generated a good deal of marketing buzz around their latest reduced-CO₂ cement ranges in 2021 and the first quarter of 2022: Buzzi Unicem’s CGreen in Germany and Italy, Holcim’s EcoPlanet in six markets from Romania to Spain, Cementir Holding’s Futurecem in Denmark and Benelux, and Cemex’s Vertua in Spain and several other countries. All boast reduced clinker factors through the use of alternative raw materials. This, however, is really a rebranding of a long-established norm in Europe.

Since 2010, cements other than CEM I have constituted over 75% of average annual cement deliveries across Cembureau member countries (all cement-producing EU member states, plus Norway, Serbia, Switzerland, Turkey, the UK and Ukraine). This statistic breaks down differently from country to country. CEM II is the norm in Austria, Finland, Portugal and Switzerland, with deliveries in the region of 90%. Portland limestone cement (PLC) makes up a majority of deliveries in all four. It has been central to Switzerland’s transition to 89% (3.72Mt) of CEM II deliveries out of a total 4.18Mt of cement despatched in 2021. There, the main types of cement were CEM II/B-M (T-LL) Portland composite cement, with 1.38Mt (33%), and two different classifications of PLC: CEM II/A-LL PLC, with 1.28Mt (31%), and CEM II/B-LL PLC, with 888,000t (21%).

A second approach is that of the Netherlands, where CEM III blast furnace slag cement with a clinker factor below 65% predominates, favoured for its sulphate resistance and the protection it offers against chloride-initiated corrosion of steel reinforcement in marine settings. By contrast, the UK has traditionally maintained a higher reliance on CEM I cement. This can be partly explained by the preference of builders there for adding fly ash or ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS) at the mixing stage. Nonetheless, CEM II Portland fly ash cement held a 14% (1.43Mt) market share in the UK’s 10.2Mt of cement consumption in 2021.

The UK Mineral Products Association (MPA) has identified limestone as an underutilised resource in the country’s cement production. Together with HeidelbergCement subsidiary Hanson Cement, it has applied for a change to National Application standards to allow the production of Portland composite cement from fly ash and limestone or GGBFS and limestone. The association has forecast that Portland composite cement could easily rise to 30 – 40% of UK cement consumption, and that this has the potential to eliminate 8% of the sector’s 7.8Mt/yr-worth of CO₂ emissions.

Metallurgical waste streams have long flowed into European cement production, primarily as GGBFS, but also as bauxite residue. In 2021, alumina production in the EU alone generated 7Mt of bauxite residue, of which the bloc recycled just 100,000t (1.4%) that year. Two projects – the Holcim Innovation Center-led ReActiv project and Titan Cement and others’ REDMUD project – aim to produce new alternative cementitious materials from bauxite residue.

By collaborating with other industries, cement producers’ investments can most effectively reduce the overall cost of using these materials in cement production. In Germany, HeidelbergCement and ThyssenKrupp’s Save CO₂ project aims to develop new improved latent hydraulic binders or alternative pozzolan from GGBFS by producing slag from directly reduced iron (DRI). The Save CO₂ team believes that GGBFS substitution for clinker has the capacity to eliminite 200Mt/yr of CO₂ emissions from global cement production.

Meanwhile in the world of mining, ThyssenKrupp and others’ NEMO project is investigating the recovery of a useable mineral fraction for cement production from the extractive waste of the Luikonlahti and Sotkamo mines in Finland and the Tara mine in Ireland, through bioleaching and cleaned mineral residue upcycling. This may give cement producers full access to Europe’s 28Bnt stockpiles of sulphidic mining waste, of which mines generate an additional 600Mt each year.

Denmark-based CemGreen, which produces the calcined clay supplementary cementitious material CemShale, is developing a shale granule heat-treating technology called CemTower. This consists of three pieces of equipment vertically integrated into cement plants’ preheaters, kilns and coolers, and brings the processing of waste materials – here oil shale – to the cement plant.

Lastly, cement producers are exploring the possible uses of waste made of cement itself. In Wallonia, HeidelbergCement subsidiary CBR’s CosmoCem project is investigating the production of alternative cement additives from large available flows of local demolition, soil remediation and industrial waste. Similarly, the Greece-based C2inCO₂ project seeks to mineralise fines from concrete recycling for HeidelbergCement to use in the production of novel cements in its Greek operations.

In Switzerland, ZND Portland composite cement (produced using fine mixed granulate from building demolitions) is the third largest cement type, with 178,000t (4.3%) of total deliveries – narrowly behind CEM I with 239,000t (5.7%).Holcim Schweiz developed its Susteno 4 ZND Portland composite cement with Switzerland’s lack of any ash or slag supply in mind, demonstrating the potential flexibility of a circular economic approach to cement production.

On 21 March 2022, the University of Trier reported that it is in the process of mapping mineral resources, waste deposits and usable residues ‘on a cross-border scale,’ in an effort to produce new materials for use in cement production. Industry participants include France-based Vicat, CBR, Buzzi Unicem subsidiary Cimalux and CRH subsidiary Eqiom. Vicat is preparing a kiln at its 1Mt/yr Xeuilley cement plant in Meurthe-et-Moselle to use in testing new alternative raw materials developed under the project.

For Cembureau and its members, work continues, with the goal of Net Zero by 2050 constantly in sight. This goal includes a reduction in members’ clinker-to-cement ratios to well below 65%. In this, the association and its members are working towards a world not just beyond CEM I, but beyond CEM II, too. What exactly this will mean remains to be seen.

Sources

CemSuisse, ‘Lieferstatistik,’ 11 January 2022, https://www.cemsuisse.ch/app/uploads/2022/01/Lieferstatistik-4.-Quartal-2021.pdf

WSA, ‘December 2021 crude steel production and 2021 global crude steel production totals,’ 25 January 2022, https://worldsteel.org/media-centre/press-releases/2022/december-2021-crude-steel-production-and-2021-global-totals/

MPA, ‘Low carbon multi-component cements for UK concrete applications,’ July 2018, https://prod-drupal-files.storage.googleapis.com/documents/resource/public/Low%20carbon%20multi-component%20cements%20for%20UK%20concrete%20applications%20PDF.pdf

European Commission, ‘European Training Network for Zero-waste Valorisation of Bauxite Residue (Red Mud),’ 16 July 2020, https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/636876

European Commission, ‘Industrial Residue Activation for sustainable cement production,’ 16 February 2022, https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/958208

Recycling Portal, Zement der Zukunft – Forschungsprojekt „SAVE CO₂“ gestartet, 28 May 2021, https://recyclingportal.eu/Archive/65677

h2020-NEMO, ‘Project,’ https://h2020-nemo.eu/project-2/

European Commission, ‘Green cement of the future: CemShale + CemTower,’ 14 April 2021, https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101009382

CosmoCem, ‘Communiqué de Presse,’ https://cosmocem.org/

CO₂ Win, ‘C²inCO₂: Calcium Carbonation for industrial use of CO₂,’ https://co2-utilization.net/en/projects/co2-mineralization/c2inco2/

Les Echos, ‘Rendre le ciment moins gourmand en CO₂,’ 21 March 2022, https://www.lesechos.fr/pme-regions/innovateurs/des-substituts-au-clinker-rendent-le-ciment-moins-gourmand-en-co2-1395002