Displaying items by tag: Skyonic

One highlight from the cement industry news over the last month was Skyonic's announcement that it has opened a commercial-scale carbon capture unit at the Capitol Aggregates cement plant in Texas, US. Details were light, but the press release promised that the unit was expected to generate US$48m/yr in revenue for an outlay of US$125m. Potentially, the implications for the process are profound, so it is worth considering some of the issues here.

Firstly, it is unclear from the public information released whether the process will actually make a profit. The revenue figures for the Skyonic unit are predictions and are dependent on the markets that the products (sodium biocarbonate, hydrogen and chlorine) will be sold into. Skyonic CEO and founder, Joe Jones, has said in interview that the sodium-based product market by itself could only support 200 - 250 plants worldwide using this process. Worldwide there are over 2000 integrated cement plants. Since Jones is selling his technology his market prediction might well be optimistic. It is also uncertain how existing sodium biocarbonate producers will react to this new source of competition.

Secondly, Skyonic is hoping to push the cost of carbon capture down to US$20/t. Carbon dioxide (CO₂) capture and transportation varies between industries depending on the purity and concentration of the by-product. For example, in 2011 the US Energy Information Administration estimated the cost for CO₂ capture to range from US$36.10/t for coal and biomass-to-liquids conversion up to US$81.08/t for cement plants. The difference being that capturing CO₂ from cement plant flue gas emissions requires more cleaning or scrubbing of other unwanted chemicals such as mercury.

With these limitations in mind, Skyonic is placing itself in competition with the existing flue gas scrubbing market rather than the carbon capture market, since the level of CO₂ removal can be scaled to local legislation. Plus, SO_x, NO₂, mercury and other heavy metals can be removed in the process.

Back on carbon capture, Skyonic is securing finance for a process it calls Skycycle, which will produce calcium-based products from CO₂, with a pilot plant planned at Capitol Aggregates for late 2015. This puts Skyonic back amongst several other pilot projects that are running around the world.

Taiwan Cement and the Industrial Technology Research Institute inaugurated their calcium looping project pilot in mid-2013. It was last reported to have a CO₂ capture rate of 1t/hr.

The Norcem cement plant in Brevik, Norway started in early 2014 to test and compare four different types of post-combustion carbon capture technologies at its pilot unit. These are Aker Solutions Amine Technology, RTI Solid Sorbent Technology, DNV GL/ NTNU/ Yodfat Engineers Membrane Technology and Alstom Power Regenerative Calcium Cycle. The project in conjunction with HeidelbergCement and the European Cement Research Academy (ECRA) is scheduled to run until 2017.

St Marys Cement in St Marys, Canada started its bioreactor pilot project in July 2014. This process uses flue gas to grow algae that can then be used for bio-oil, food, fertiliser and sewage treatment.

If Skyonic is correct then its sodium biocarbonate process in Texas is a strong step towards cutting CO₂ emissions in the cement industry. Unfortunately, it looks like it can only be a step since the market won't support large-scale adoption of this technology. Other pilots are in progress but they are unlikely to gather momentum until legislation forces cement producers to adopt these technologies or someone devises a method that pays for the capture cost.

US: Skyonic has opened its first commercial-scale CO₂ capture and utilisation facility, at the Capitol Aggregates cement plant in San Antonio, Texas. The US$125m Capitol SkyMine will have a total CO₂ mitigation impact of 300,000t/yr, through the direct capture of 75,000t of CO₂ and transformation into sodium bicarbonate, bleach and hydrochloric acid. The unit is expected to generate around US$48m/yr in revenue and US$28m/yr in annual earnings.

"The Capitol SkyMine facility is the first step in our vision to mitigate the effects of industrial pollution and close the carbon cycle," said Joe Jones, founder and CEO of Skyonic. The SkyMine process allows up to 90% of CO₂ emissions from flue gas to be captured and transformed into solid products that can then be sold.

US: Texas-based cement producer Capitol Aggregates Cement is preparing to retrofit a carbon capture plant to its cement plant. The project, in conjunction with Skyonic Corporation, is expected to profitably removal more than 300,000t of CO₂ from the plant's emissions.

"The Capitol SkyMine plant will mark the first time that carbon-negative chemistry has reached the commercial stage," said Joe Jones, founder and CEO of Skyonic. Skyonic Corporation has secured US$128m funding to support the project from new investors Cenovus Energy, BlueCap Partners, Toyo-Thai Corporation and Energy Technology Ventures. The funds will also help support Skyonic's other global projects, research and development and operations expenses. In addition the US Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory will provide US$28m towards the project.

The retrofit plant is expected to directly capture 83,000t of CO₂ from the Capitol Aggregates' emissions. In addition by using this captured CO₂ to make products that would otherwise generate additional CO₂ , the plant will offset an additional 220,000t/yr, once fully operational in 2014. Skyonic is also expected to create more than 200 jobs through the plant's construction and ongoing operations.

Skyonic's electrolytic SkyMine(R) technology will selectively capture CO₂, acid gases and heavy metals from the flue gas and mineralise the captured pollutants into safe, stable, solid products. Skyonic state that their carbon capture process does so at a lower cost than its competitors. The plant is expected to turn a profit from the sale of these products within three years.