Displaying items by tag: Vattenfall

Global: Vattenfall and Cemvision have agreed to develop and supply low carbon cement, aiming to cut CO₂ emissions by 95% from traditional levels, according to Vattenfall. This agreement is underpinned by a letter of intent. The partnership utilises Cemvision’s technology, producing cement from recycled industrial materials and powered by renewable energy.

Cemvision CEO Oscar Hållén said "We are delighted to deepen our partnership with Vattenfall and to welcome them to our growing customer base. Already today in our demo production, we are reducing carbon emissions by 80%, and as we optimise processes and supply chain, we will reduce by up to 95% by 2030. Near-zero emission cement is the most efficient way to achieve significant climate benefits without increasing the overall cost of a construction project.”

Readers may have noticed the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) is currently taking place at Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt. Many of the cement companies, suppliers and related associations are present at the annual jamboree and getting stuck in. For example, Holcim’s chief sustainability officer Magali Anderson was scheduled on 8 November 2022 to discuss solutions to decarbonise the built environment at the event’s Building Pavilion, Cemex’s chief executive officer Fernando A González took part in the First Movers Coalition (FMC) panel, FLSmidth is down for a number of talks and both the Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA) and World Cement Association are busy too.

Stone cold progress, if any, from the conference is yet to emerge although there is still time given that the event runs until 18 November 2022. No doubt some sort of ‘big message’ style international commitment or plan will emerge from the haggling. However, on the cement sector side, the biggest story so far has been the FMC plan for some of its members to procure at least 10% near-zero cement and concrete for its projects by 2030. Both Holcim and Cemex were founding members of the collation of companies that intend to use their purchasing power to support sustainable technologies in hard to abate sectors. Commitments for the aviation, shipping, steel and trucking sectors were set at COP26 in Glasgow, aluminium and CO₂ removal followed in May 2022 and chemicals and concrete were scheduled for November 2022. The latter has started to happen with the formation of the FMC’s cement and concrete group. Companies involved include ETEX, General Motors, Ørsted, RMZ Corporation and Vattenfall. Of these, Sweden-based energy producer Vattenfall has publicly said it is going for the 10% near-zero cement and concrete target by 2030.

Table 1: Net CO₂ emission intensity (kgCO2/t) for cement production at selected large cement producers.

While we wait for more announcements to escape from Sharm El Sheikh it might be worth reflecting upon one of the targets some of the cement companies have set themselves for 2030. Table 1 above compares the net CO₂ emission intensity for cement production at some of the large cement producers. It doesn’t tell us much, other than that the CO₂ emission intensity for these companies was in the region of 550 - 600kgCO₂/t of cementitious material in 2021. This compares to 580kgCO₂/t in 2020 for the GCCA’s Getting the Numbers Right (GNR) data for the companies it covers. The companies featured in Table 1 are all aiming – or appear to be aiming – for 475 - 525kgCO₂/t by 2030. This may not sound like much but it has and will require hard work, innovation, investment and risk on the part of the cement producers. This is also before carbon capture, utilisation and/or storage (CCUS) units will have been built at most cement plants. Yes, until the CO₂ emission intensity goes to down to zero, if cement production volumes keep rising sufficiently then total gross CO₂ emissions from the cement industry will also increase. Yet, gross CO₂ emissions from cement production are likely to peak sometime between now and 2030 if they haven’t already.

One sobering fact to end with is that 1990 is now further in the past than 2050 is in the future. If you can remember George Bush Sr as US president or you saw the film Goodfellas at the cinema then that’s the amount of time we have left to reach net zero. The global economic shocks of the post-coronavirus period and the war in Ukraine are stressing the world’s climate targets more than ever before. Let’s see how COP27 reacts to this. So far though, serious commitments to using low-carbon cement and concrete from big companies are a useful step to entrenching these products in the market.

Coolbrook has been in the news recently with collaboration deals struck with Cemex and UltraTech Cement. First the Finland-based company officially launched its Roto Dynamic Heater (RDH) technology with a memorandum of understanding signed with Cemex in May 2022. Then, this week, it signed a similar agreement with UltraTech Cement.

The specifics of either agreement are unknown but the target is clearly to build an industrial pilot of an electric kiln – or something like it - at a cement plant. Coolbrook says it has run a pilot of its RDH technology in Finland. Further tests are now scheduled to continue for two years starting from September 2022 at the Brightlands Chemelot Campus at Geleen in the Netherlands. Commercial scale demonstrations are scheduled from 2022 with the hope of commercial use from 2024. Links with Cemex and UltraTech Cement seem to suggest progress. At the same time Coolbrook will be testing its RotoDynamic Reactor (RDR) technology, which promises to electrify the steam cracking process used in plastic manufacturing.

Publically available details on the RDH technology are light. In its promotional material Coolbrook says that it can achieve process temperatures of up to around 1700°C. This is crucial to achieve full clinker formation in a cement kiln. Reaching this temperature with non-combustion style kilns, such as solar reactors, has previously been a problem. Notably, Synhelion and Cemex said in February 2022 that they had managed to produce clinker using concentrated solar radiation. Retrofit possibilities and compact equipment size are also mentioned in the promotional material for the RDH. The former is an obvious attraction but size of equipment footprint is increasingly emerging as a potential issue for cement plants looking to reduce their CO₂ emissions. Rick Bohan from the Portland Cement Association (PCA) presented a summary of the potential and problems of emerging carbon capture and utilisation/storage (CCUS) technologies for cement plants in the US at the Virtual Global CemCCUS Seminar that took place on 14 June 2022. He noted that installing CCUS equipment makes cement plants start to look different (more like petrochemical plants in the view of Global Cement Weekly) and that they may require more space to install it all.

Coolbrook hasn’t been the only organisation looking at kiln electrification. The installation with the most available information on kiln electrification has been the Decarbonate project, led by the VTT, formerly known as the Technical Research Centre of Finland. The project has built a pilot rotary kiln with a length of 8m inside a shipping container. It has a production capacity of around 25kg/hr. The system reportedly uses fixed radiant heating coils around the kiln, surrounded by insulation materials. Early results presented to the 1st Virtual Global CemPower Seminar in late 2021 were that the kiln started up, sufficient calcination was occurring and the system was operated continuously for three days at a temperature of 1000°C with no problems reported. Further research was scheduled to carry on into 2022 with longer trials planned for three different materials.

HeidelbergCement’s subsidiary in Sweden, Cementa, completed a feasibility study on implementing electrified cement production at its Slite plant in 2019. It then said that it was conducting further study with electricity producer Vattenfall as part of CemZero project. This consists of three projects running to 2025. Namely: heat transfer with plasma in rotary kilns; direct separation of carbon dioxide from calcination of carbonate-based raw materials in the production of cement clinker and burnt lime; and carbon dioxide-free products with electrified production - reactivity of cement clinker with secondary additives. HeidelbergCement has since announced plans to build a full scale 1.8Mt/yr carbon capture and storage (CCS) plant at the Slite cement plant by 2030.

How this would fit with any kiln electrification plans is unknown. However, one attraction of moving to an electrical kiln, for all of the projects above, is to cut out the 40 – 50% of a cement plant’s CO₂ emissions that arise from the fuel that is burnt. Taking a kiln electric also makes CO₂ capture easier. Much of the remainder of the CO₂ released comes from the decomposition of limestone during calcination when clinker is created. Substitute out fossil or alternative fuels and the flue gas becomes much purer CO₂.

It is early days for cement kiln electrification but progress is happening both commercially and scientifically. The next step to watch out for will be the first pilot installation at a cement plant. One point to finish with is a comment that Rick Bohan made at the IEEE-IAS/PCA Cement Industry Technical Conference that took place in May 2022: carbon capture is expected to double a cement plant’s energy consumption. Kiln electrification is one potential route for cement production to reach net zero. CCUS is another. If one or both occur then a low carbon future could be a high energy one also.

Watch out for Global Cement’s forthcoming interview with Coolbrook in the September 2022 issue of Global Cement Magazine

For more on CCUS, download the proceedings pack for the Virtual Global CemCCUS Seminar 2022

For more on Synhelion and Cemex read the interview in the December 2020 issue of Global Cement Magazine interview

Sweden: Cementa, subsidiary of HeidelbergCement, and Vattenfall are conducting a pilot study on electrified cement production to attempt to reach zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2030. The intention of the CemZero project is to supply power to cement plants from a so-called ‘climate smart Swedish energy system.’

"Electrification within the industry is an important element in the transition to sustainable urban development. We are now going to develop knowledge within the field in order to ascertain together with Vattenfall whether it is a potential future solution for cement production," says Jan Gånge, chief executive officer (CEO) of Cementa.