Displaying items by tag: carbon capture and utilisation

Finland: VTT Technical Research Centre subsidiary Carbonaide has concluded its seed funding round, having raised funds worth Euro1.8m. Lakan Betoni, which produces precast and ready-mix concrete, led the funding, along with utilities provider Vantaa Energy. Carbonaide will use the funds to build an industrial pilot plant for its carbon neutral precast concrete product at an existing precast concrete plant in Hollola. The plant will bind captured CO₂ in the product at atmospheric pressure. The process generates 50% lower CO₂ emissions than precast concrete production using ordinary Portland cement (OPC). Suitable raw materials include ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS), green liquor dregs and bio-ash. In trial production, the use of GGBFS gave Carbonaide's concrete a negative carbon footprint of -60kg/m³.

Other sources of loans and in-kind contributions included Finnish state innovation fund Business Finland.

Canada/UAE: Supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) producer Carbon Upcycling Technologies has signed a strategic partnership agreement with technical consultancy A³&Co. The partners will now work towards the delivery of an SCM enhancement reactor that bolts on to existing cement plant equipment. Canada-based Carbon Upcycling Technologies expects to be able to offer the technology to global cement industry customers by March 2025.

Carbon Upcycling Technologies CEO Apoorv Sinha said "We look forward to collaborating with A³&Co. Their extensive experience working with over 125 facilities across the globe will prove invaluable as we continue to adapt our technology for seamless integration at cement plants, enabling onsite sequestration and utilisation of CO₂."

Canada: Progressive Planet is preparing to build a 3200t/yr pilot plant for its PozGlass product at its headquarters in Kamloops, British Columbia. The company aims to commercialise its process, which produces pozzolan from recycled glass for use in cement or concrete production. The pilot unit will also sequester CO₂ released by a gas dryer at the site, from which it will produce sodium carbonate. The pilot plant is expected to go under construction in 2023 and be operational in 2024.

Steve Harpur, the chief executive officer of Progressive Planet, said “With PozGlass, a CleanTech breakthrough from our C-Quester Centre of Sustainable Innovation in Kamloops, we are producing one of many upcoming private-sector solutions that are needed to meet the 2050 Net Zero targets to fight climate change.”

Progressive Planet aims for PozGlass production to be situated at cement kilns, where PozGlass could be mixed with Portland cement at a 50:50 ratio.

Belgium: Cembureau, the European cement association, has warned against a proposed 2041 phase-out date for industrial CO₂ in the Commission draft Delegated Act on renewable fuels of non-biological origin (RFNBOs). The European Commission’s (EC) draft Delegated Act on the greenhouse gas saving criteria for RFNBOs sets the rules under which such fuels can qualify as sustainable. The European Commission considers that CO₂ from industrial sources should not be allowed for the production of synthetic fuels as of 2041, as this would go against the objective of carbon neutrality by 2050.

Koen Coppenholle, the chief executive officer of Cembureau, said “By proposing an arbitrary deadline on the use of industrial CO₂, the EC severely restricts the deployment of carbon capture and utilisation (CCU) in the cement sector.” He continued “We regret that this phase-out date was established without a thorough impact assessment. This risks negatively impacting several on-going carbon capture projects in the European Union (EU), at a time of a global race for green investments.” Coppenholle also called for a “real, thorough debate on CO₂ utilisation” to ensure that EU policies support CCU and the deployment of CO₂ transport infrastructure and storage.

The association is objecting against this proposal because in its view: manufacturing synthetic fuels using industrial CO₂ make a “decisive” contribution to climate mitigation in the short to medium term; no impact assessment has been presented by the EC; the delegated act threatens the viability of existing CCU projects in the cement sector, which require a payback time of 30 - 35 years; and the Delegated Act does not recognise the reality of industrial installations like cement plants, which are faced with unavoidable CO₂ emissions, and may not have access to CO₂ geological storage sites.

The Delegated Act will be passed to the European Parliament and Council for further scrutiny until April 2023 whereupon they will either accept to reject the proposals. The scrutiny period can be extended to June 2023 at the request of either body.

Belgium: The EU Innovation Fund has awarded Euro4.5m to a consortium consisting of Lhoist, gas provider Fluxys Belgium, concrete products company Prefer and carbonation technology developer Orbix. The collaborators are working on a project called CO2ncrEAT. The project will carbonate steel sector by-products with captured CO₂ from Lhoist's Hermalle lime plant to produce alternative building materials. CO2ncrEAT will be the first project to employ Orbix's innovative technique for the purpose. Fluxys Belgium's pipeline technology will convey the Hermalle plant's emissions over a distance of 2km to a Prefer concrete blocks plant.

The consortium said that it will use 12,000t/yr of CO₂ to produce 100,000t/yr of reduced-CO₂ concrete blocks. The use of alternative raw materials in the blocks will further reduce their carbon footprint by 8000t/yr.

Lhoist Western Europe managing director Vincent Deleers said “The project fits perfectly with our willingness to actively develop CO₂ capture and sequestration technologies that are essential to the sustainability of our industry. We are delighted that our work on innovative solutions has been recognised by the European Innovation Fund and we look forward to working with our partners to bring CO2ncrEAT to the next level.”

South Korea: UK-based TCRK has announced a deal with Asia Cement to use its carbon capture and utilisation (CCU) technology at the cement producer’s plant in Jaechon. The project will see the first commercial deployment of TCRK’s CCUS technology from the first quarter of 2023. It will initially target 30,000t/yr of CO₂ equivalent and then ramp up to 120,000t/yr of CO₂ equivalent by mid-2024. The second target is intended to help Asia Cement reduce its emissions by 20% required to meet its 2025 decarbonisation plan.

TCRK’s approach will use two processes to utilise capture CO₂ from cement production. Its Arago Cement Process uses captured CO₂, cement kiln dust and by-pass particles to produce precipitated calcium carbonate, which TCRK uses to produce a product called Arago Cement. The captured CO₂ will also be used to grow microalgae in a process called bio-fixation. This method will offer 10% extra carbon storage capacity. The microalgae has a wide range of potential end-products including bioplastics and animal feed, and can also be used as a source of bio-cement production.

Australia: Cement Australia’s Gladstone cement plant in Queensland will host a study of methanol production from green hydrogen and captured CO₂. Japan-based Mitsubishi Gas Chemical Company will supply its green methanol production technology, while hydrogen and oxygen feedstocks will be sourced locally. Cement Australia and Mitsubishi Gas Chemical Company will collaborate on commercialisation of their green methanol. Cement Australia said that carbon capture and its utilisation in value added products is a strategic pillar of the company’s decarbonisation roadmap.

The cement producer said “The Gladstone region is the ideal location for growing a diverse green hydrogen sector, with abundant renewable energy sources, existing infrastructure, including port facilities, and a highly skilled workforce. The green hydrogen economy is a priority for the Queensland government under the Queensland Hydrogen Industry Strategy.”

Spain: Brazil-based Votorantim Cimentos' Córdoba, Niebla and La Araña cement plants in Andalusia are at the centre of a planned Euro1bn decarbonisation project by the company. Votorantim Cimentos will publish details of its plans, which include renewably powered green hydrogen and biofuels production, in early 2023.

Votorantim Cimentos Europe, Asia and Africa CEO Jorge Wagner said "We need agility with the administration, because the investments are stratospheric and long-term. We want to obtain subsidies, taking advantage of European funds." He concluded "We have the opportunity to carry out a very beautiful project in Andalusia and beat the Americans."

Greece: Titan Cement Group has successfully started a pilot CO₂ capture demonstration project at its Kamari plant. As part of the RECODE2020 project it said it had reached a CO₂ purity above 99% during initial operation by using ionic liquids as the CO₂ adsorbents. The captured CO₂ is then intended to be utilised by converting it to nanocalcite and additives that can reused in cement production in different ways. The cement producer is also running the CARMOF project at the plant.

It’s been a good week for carbon capture projects in Europe with the announcement of who the European Union (EU) has selected for a grant from its Innovation Fund. 17 large-scale projects have been pre-selected for the Euro1.8bn being doled out in the second round of awards. On the cement and lime sector side there are four projects. These include projects at Holcim’s Lägerdorf cement plant in Germany, HeidelbergCement’s Devnya Cement plant in Bulgaria, Holcim’s Kujawy plant in Poland and Lhoist’s Chaux et Dolomites du Boulonnais lime plant in France. Large-scale in this instance means projects with capital costs over Euro7.5m. To give readers some sense of the scale of the projects that the EU has agreed to pay for, if the funding was shared out equally between the current bunch, it would be a little over Euro100m per project. This is serious money.

Devnya Cement’s ANRAV carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) project in Bulgaria has received little public attention so far so we’ll look a little more closely at this one first. No obvious information is available on what capture technology might be in consideration at the plant. HeidelbergCement’s leading experience in carbon capture technology at cement plants gives it a variety of methods it could use from a solvent scrubbing route to something less common. What the company has said is that, subject to regulatory approval and permitting, the project could start to capture 0.8Mt/yr of CO₂ from 2028.

What has also been revealed is that the project is linking up via pipelines to a depleted part of the Galata gas field site in the Black Sea. Oil and gas company Petroceltic Bulgaria is a partner and the aim of the project is to start a CCUS cluster in Eastern Europe. with the potential for other capture sites in Romania and Egypt to join in. This is noteworthy because much of the focus for the burgeoning cement sector CCUS in Europe so far has been on usage on local industrial clusters or storage in the North Sea.

The other new one is the Go4ECOPlanet project at Holcim’s Kujawy plant in Poland. Lafarge Cement is working with Air Liquide on the project. The latter will be providing its Cryocap FG adsorption and cryogenics technology for direct capture of flue gas at the plant. The transportation of the CO₂ is also interesting here as it will be by train not pipeline. Liquid CO₂ will be despatched to a terminal in Gdańsk, then transferred to ships before being pumped down into a storage field under the North Sea.

Turning to the other two grant recipients, the Carbon2Business project plans to capture over 1Mt/yr of CO₂ using a second generation oxyfuel process at Holcim Deutschland’s Lägerdorf cement plant. This project is part of a larger regional hydrogen usage cluster so the captured CO₂ will be used to manufacture methanol in combination with the hydrogen. Finally, Lhoist’s project at a lime plant in France is another team-up with Air Liquide, again using the latter’s Cryocap technology. The capture CO₂ will be transported by shared pipeline to a hub near Dunkirk and then stored beneath the North Sea as part of the D'Artagnan initiative. Around 0.61Mt/yr of CO₂ is expected to be sequestered.

The key point to consider from all of the above is that all of these projects are clear about what is happening to the CO₂ after capture. The days of ‘carbon capture and something’ have thankfully been left behind. CO₂ transportation infrastructure is either being used or built and these cement plants will be feeding into it. This will inevitably lead to questions about whether all these new CO₂ networks can support themselves with or without EU funding but that is an argument for another day.

Finally, in other news, four residents from the Indonesian island of Pulau Pari started legal proceedings against Holcim last week for alleged damages caused by climate change. Industrial CO₂ emissions are unquestionably a cause of this along with other sources but what a court might think about this remains to be seen. Yet, it is intriguing that the plantiffs have decided to go after the 47th largest corporate emitter rather than, say, one of the top 10. Regardless of how far the islanders get this is likely not to be last such similar attempt. If the case does make it to court though it seems likely that Holcim will mention its work on CCUS such as the two projects above. Only another 200-odd cement plants in Europe to go.