Displaying items by tag: TotalEnergies

Sinoma International Engineering revealed this week that it has signed a Euro218m contract to supply a new clinker production line for Holcim Belgium. The scope of the deal covers building the new line from limestone unloading via train to clinker transportation and storage. Provisional acceptance and first clinker are stipulated to occur within about four years, by late 2027. Holcim Belgium operates the Obourg Plant, its only integrated unit in the country, and the unit has been preparing to build a new line as part of its Go4Zero project.

Two main points compete for one’s attention with the project at the Obourg Plant. Firstly, this may be the first time a large Europe-based cement producer has publicly contracted a China-based supplier to build a new production line. Secondly, the new line is part of a process to first replace two wet kilns at the site with a dry kiln. This is part of a grand plan at the site to add oxyfuel technology to the plant and then start capturing most of the CO₂ emitted for sequestration in the North Sea.

On the first point, China-based Sinoma International Engineering reported to the Shanghai Stock Exchange in early December 2023 that it had signed a contract for the project. Holcim Belgium has not said that it has appointed the subsidiary of CNBM but this is not unusual. Buyers are at liberty to name suppliers, or not as may be the case. Holcim has been talking about the Go4Zero project for several years though, so appointing a lead contractor is not surprising.

Yet, some cement companies in Europe have previously been circumspect about revealing the use of China-based suppliers. Lafarge France, for example, did not appear to publicly name the involvement of Sinoma International Engineering and its subsidiaries on the construction of a new line at its Martres-Tolosane cement plant between 2019 and 2022, although Lafarge Poland did say in 2020 that it had contracted China Triumph International Engineering for an upgrade to its Małogoszcz cement plant. No doubt there have been other plant projects in Europe from China-based suppliers that Global Cement Weekly is unaware of. It is also worth considering that just because a lead contractor on a plant project is from a particular country it doesn’t mean that the equipment and other sub-contractors necessarily are. And, of course, to add to the confusion, some Europe-based equipment suppliers are owned by companies based in China.

This leads to the second point. Holcim Belgium’s eventual goal is to set up a full-scale carbon capture, transportation and sequestration (CCUS) operation at Obourg using oxyfuel technology by the end of the 2020s. Spending over Euro200m on building a new (but conventional) production line is not trivial but it is being presented as one step towards creating a cement plant for the net zero age. To this end Holcim Belgium has been less shy in naming its partners for the second phase of the project: Air Liquide; Fluxys; and TotalEnergies. This may be due to the collaborative nature of this phase though and the need to apply for European Union (EU) funding to support it. In July 2023 Holcim disclosed that the EU Innovation Fund had allocated grants for three of its projects including the one at Obourg.

For reference, a number of other full-scale oxyfuel projects have been announced in Europe including in Germany at Heidelberg Materials' Geseke cement plant, Holcim Deutschland's Lägerdorf plant in Germany and Schwenk Zement’s Mergelstetten plant. Another one is planned for Heidelberg Materials’ CBR's Antoing cement plant in Belgium. Most of these are planned for the late 2020s or with pilots sooner. The key bit of information to consider here is that adding oxyfuel technology to a cement kiln (or building one with it to start with) makes it easier to capture CO₂ from the flue gas as it is more concentrated. However, the technology is newer and less-tested than many post-combustion carbon capture methods. Hence, the world’s first full-scale CCUS unit at a cement plant, at Brevik in Norway, will use a post combustion method.

All of this begs the question about where the value will lie in building cement plants for the age of net zero? The planned work at Holcim Belgium’s Obourg Plant pretty much summarises this quandary. Building a cement production line is expensive but the cost of disposing of CO₂ may become the single-biggest driver of whether a plant is profitable or not if governments are serious about reaching net zero. To that end today’s announcement from the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) calling on the parties to “transition away from fossil fuels to reach net zero” is another sign of the increasing effects of the so-called ‘carbon agenda’ upon the cement sector. In which case the companies that can supply equipment to take care of the CO₂ emissions start becoming more important and discussions over who supplies the rest of the kit less so. Naturally, some cement equipment suppliers are already pivoting towards this approach. Others may find different solutions. Whether this works or not is a question for the future. In the mean-time, building new plants is looking increasingly collaborative.

Taiwan Cement has just commissioned a 107MWh energy storage project at its Yingde plant in Guangdong province, China. Subsidiary NHOA Energy worked on the installation and has been promoting it this week. The battery storage works in conjunction with a 42MW waste heat recovery (WHR) unit, a 8MWp solar photovoltaic unit and a proprietary energy management system. It is expected to store about 46,000MWh/yr of electricity and save just under US$3m/yr in electricity costs.

NHOA Energy, formerly known as Engie EPS before Taiwan Cement bought a majority stake in it, claims it is one of the largest industrial microgrids in the world. We can’t verify this for sure, but it is definitely large. For comparison, the 750MW Vistra Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility in California often gets cited as the largest such facility in the world. This is run by a power company, as are many other large battery energy storage systems. In its annual report for 2022 Taiwan Cement said it was planning to using NHOA’s technology to build seven other large-scale energy storage projects at sites in Taiwan including its integrated Suao, Ho-Ping and Hualien cement plants.

The aim here appears to be supplying renewable electricity to the national grid in Taiwan. Taiwan Cement is diversifying away from cement production, with an aim to derive over 50% of its revenues from other activities besides cement by 2025. In 2022 cement and concrete represented 68% of its sales, while its electricity and energy division, including power supply and rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, represented 29%. The company is also not using its own batteries at the Yingde plant. Instead it is using lithium iron phosphate batteries supplied by Ningde Times. This is worth noting, as the cement producer’s batteries are used in vehicles.

Global Cement regularly reports news stories on cement plants that are building photovoltaic solar power arrays. However, so far at least, energy storage projects at scale have been rarer. One earlier example of an energy storage system loosely associated with a cement plant includes the now decommissioned Tehachapi Energy Storage Project that was situated next to the Tehachapi cement plant in California. That project tested using lithium ion batteries to improve grid performance and integrate intermittent generation from nearby wind farms. It is also worth noting that Sumitomo Osaka Cement’s sister company Sumitomo Electric is one of the world’s larger manufacturers of flow batteries, although no installation at a cement plant appears to have happened yet. In simple terms, flow batteries are an alternative to lithium ion batteries that don’t store as much energy but last longer.

More recently, Lucky Cement in Pakistan started commercial operation of a 34MW solar power plant with a 5.59MWh energy storage unit at its Pezu plant in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in late 2022. Reon Energy provided the equipment including a lithium-ion based battery approach to the storage. Then, in March 2023, Holcim US said that it was working with TotalEnergies to build solar power capacity and a battery energy storage unit at the Florence cement plant in Colorado. TotalEnergies will install, maintain and operate a 33MW DC ground-mounted solar array and a 38.5MWh battery energy storage system at the site. Operation of the renewable energy system is expected to start in 2025.

Away from electrical batteries, the other approach to energy storage at cement plants that has received attention recently from several quite different companies has been thermal batteries. The two prominent groups using them at different scales are Rondo Energy and Synhelion. The former company has developed its Heat Battery technology, which uses refractory bricks to absorb intermittent renewable energy and then supply the energy back as a steady stream of hot gas for use in a cement plant mill, dryer, calciner or kiln. Both Siam Cement Group (SCG) and Titan Cement have invested in Rondo Energy. In July 2023 SCG and Rondo Energy said that they were planning to expand the production capacity of a heat battery storage unit at a SCG plant to 90GWh/yr. Synhelion, meanwhile, has been working with Cemex on using concentrated solar power to manufacture clinker. It achieved this on an ‘industrially viable scale’ in August 2023. It has since been reported that the companies are working on building a small scale industrial plant at Móstoles near Madrid by 2026. Crucially for this discussion though, the process also uses a thermal energy storage unit filled with ceramic refractory material to allow thermal energy to be released at night, and thus ensure continuous operation.

The examples above demonstrate that some cement companies are actively testing out storing energy at scale. Whilst this will not solve the cement sector’s process emissions, it does potentially start to make using renewable energy sources more reliable and reduce the variable costs of renewable power. Whether it catches on remains to be seen. Most of these kinds of projects have been run by power companies and that is where it may stay. It is instructive to note that Reon Energy was the only company to state that its battery-based energy storage system has a life-span of 8 - 12 years. Our current vision of a net-zero future points to high electrical usage but it may be shaped by how good the batteries are… from our phones to our cars to our cement plants.

For more information on Rondo Energy read the January 2023 issue of Global Cement Magazine

France: Heidelberg Materials, Lafarge France, Lhoist and utilities provider TotalEnergies launched the GO CO₂ carbon capture and storage project at the port of Nantes-Saint-Nazaire on 10 July 2023. The Le Marin newspaper has reported that the Euro1.7bn project will treat and liquefy captured CO₂ for underwater storage. The initial participating plants will be Lafarge France’s Saint-Pierre-la-Cour cement plant and Lhoist’s Neau lime plant.

Preliminary studies will commence later in 2023, with an investment decision to be taken in 2027, for commissioning of the project in 2030. The consortium will initially process 2.6Mt/yr of captured CO₂, rising to 4Mt/yr in 2050.

US: Holcim US has appointed TotalEnergies to install, maintain and operate a 33MW solar power plant and 38.5MWh battery system at its Florence, Colorado cement plant. By storing energy with the battery system, the plant can relieve demand on the grid at peak times. Holcim will receive roughly 71,000MWh/yr of renewable energy under a minimum 15-year power purchase and storage services agreement (PPSSA). The partners expect the new systems to reduce the plant's CO₂ emissions by 40,000t/yr and its energy consumption by 40%.

Holcim North America’s vice president for procurement Atl Martinez said "As we work to accelerate green growth across the US, it's critical that we come to the table with partners who share similar goals around circularity and renewable energy. This initiative with TotalEnergies demonstrates an ongoing determination to transform our operations and lower our carbon footprint. It's a milestone investment that will decrease our reliance on other sources of energy and shrink our utility costs through a powerful combination of clean energy and efficient operations."

Belgium: Holcim and TotalEnergies have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to work towards the full decarbonisation of the Obourg cement plant. Various energies and technologies will be assessed for the capture, utilisation and sequestration (CCUS) of around 1.3Mt/yr of CO₂ emitted by the unit. The project will include working towards building an oxyfuel switchable kiln as part of an upgrade project at the plant and the transportation and use of the captured CO₂ by TotalEnergies for a synthetic fuel producing scheme and/or deposit in geological storage in the North Sea.

TotalEnergies will also assess the development of renewable projects to power a new electrolyser, which would generate the green hydrogen needed to produce synthetic fuels. This new renewable energy production capacity would also power Holcim’s new oxyfuel kiln. Finally, the oxygen emitted by the electrolyser would be used to fuel the new kiln.

Bart Daneels, the chief executive officer of Holcim Belgium said “Cement industry decarbonisation is extremely challenging because of the process's inevitable CO₂ emissions, which put us firmly in the hard-to-abate sector. CCUS is vital for Obourg to become the first net carbon neutral clinker plant in northwest Europe. We are very happy to work with TotalEnergies to accelerate the development of these CCUS solutions for GO4ZERO. By joining the first movers, we want to set the standards for future clinker manufacturing plants.”

France: Vicat says it aims to start cultivating spirulina at its Montalieu-Vercieu cement plant in the summer of 2022 as part of its Cimentalgue project. It plans to grow 1t/yr until 2024 as part of a trial looking at volume and quality, according to the Agence France Presse. It will use CO₂ and waste heat from the plant to grow the cyanobacteria that can be used as a food source.

The project is being conducted with Algosource and the GEPEA (Process Engineering for Environment and Food) laboratory at the University of Nantes. TotalEnergies is also involved as a financial backer. The project has a budget of Euro2m and is also supported by the Environment and Energy Management Agency (ADEME).