Displaying items by tag: carbon capture

There were two main takeaways from the Global Future Cement Conference that took place in Brussels last week. Firstly, there are not any obvious alternatives to using cement and concrete. Secondly, serious at-scale commercial investment on capturing CO₂ process emissions from clinker production is still waiting for the right economic conditions.

Graph 1: Embodied energy versus embodied CO₂ of building materials. Source: Hammond & Jones, University of Bath, UK.

Although the conference was heavily focused on Europe, the graph above explains why the cement and concrete industries are sitting pretty right now in the face of mounting environmental activism. The sector may be responsible for 5 - 10% of annual CO₂ emissions but, put bluntly, there is simply no alternative. As Karen Scrivner from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) explained during her presentation, concrete uses some of the most abundant minerals present on earth, notably silicon and calcium. Alternative chemistries are simply not backed up by available materials. The cement and concrete associations have strongly promoted the unique position by focusing on the whole lifecycle of building materials.

The energy and emissions research needs to be scrutinised much more closely but, if it’s correct, there is no way to maintain modern standards of living without concrete. And, judging from the response by the French public to a badly handled meagre carbon tax on diesel by the so-called Yellow Vest movement, whacking up the price of housing or infrastructure might go down badly, especially in developing countries.

Two immediate ‘outs’ presents themselves. Cement doesn't necessarily have to be made from clinker as Robert McCaffrey’s presentation reinforced (also given at the IEEE/IAS-PCA Cement Conference this year). Future research may find alternatives to clinker and wipe out the cement business in the process. Also, the graph above is based on per kilogramme amounts of each building material. It doesn’t indicate how much of each material is required to build things. Even if clinker-based building materials are irreplaceable, there is no reason why their market share might not decrease. This could have large consequences in a market already burdened by over-capacity.

Graph 2: Comparison of cost of carbon capture technology for the cement industry. Source: European Cement Research Academy (ECRA).

Solid research into carbon capture technology is proceeding apace, from the LEILAC project at HeidelbergCement’s Lixhe plant, to oxyfuel kiln development and other methods, as Jan Theulen from HeidelbergCement demonstrated in his presentation. Off-the-shelf technologies from other industries also exist ready to be used. Today, for example, Inventys has announced plans to test its own CO₂ capture technology with Lafarge Canada. Yet there are no commercial-scale installations in Europe. most likely due to the price burden it would place on the end product.

With the European Union (EU) Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) entering its fourth phase and the carbon price holding above Euro20/t the question is: when will the serious investment begin in Europe? Notably, more than a few major European cement equipment manufacturers attended the Global Future Cement Conference, yet none are offering mature products to capture CO₂ emissions. Most or all have projects up their sleeves ready to be developed and sold but orders aren’t being received. The carbon price in Europe is the problem here. If it's too low then nothing happens outside of government subsidy. Too high and cement plants start being shut down because they become too expensive to run. To be fair to the cement sector other carbon emission mitigation strategies are being employed from alternative fuels usage to lowering the clinker factor and other methods but the endgame is based on reducing process emissions.

The challenge for the cement and concrete industry is to show legislators that their materials are essential and irreplaceable. They are doing this. The legislators then need to concoct ways of encouraging mass scale rollout of carbon emissions abatement technology without destroying the cement industry. This is far from certain right now. If nothing else it’s in governments’ interest to get this right because, as the Yellow Vest protests show, if they get it wrong their voters become angry. All of this is happening against the clock as CCU/S is required to get the cement industry past the 2050 2°C maximum warming target set by the Paris Agreement. In the meantime the cement industry is essentially in a holding position on the more far-reaching aspects of CO₂ emissions mitigation. Its products are likely irreplaceable but its carbon capture technology has to be encouraged by governments. This means that, for most cement producers, waiting to see what happens next is the way forward.

The 3rd Future Cement Conference and Exhibition is scheduled to take place in Vienna, Austria in 2021

Canada: Lafarge Canada plans to develop and demonstrate a full-cycle solution to capture and reuse CO₂ from a cement plant. Project CO₂MENT will demonstrate and evaluate Inventys' CO₂ capture system and a selection of CO₂ utilisation technologies at Lafarge's Richmond cement plant in British Colombia over the next four years. This project is being led by Inventys in partnership with Lafarge Canada and Total. It also received financial support from CCP (CO₂ Capture Project), the Province of British Colombia and Canada's federal government through the National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC IRAP).

"At Inventys, we see a real opportunity to build a CO₂ marketplace where tonnes of CO₂ are traded between emitters and users," said Inventys president and chief executive officer (CEO) Claude Letourneau.

Phase I of Project CO₂MENT, the Contaminant Program, will attempt to reduce harmful organic and inorganic substances, such as sulphur dioxide, dust and soot, as well as nitrogen oxides, from cement flue gas. Phase II, the CO₂ Capture Program, will separate the CO₂ from flue gas using a customised-for-cement version of Inventys' carbon capture technology at pilot scale. Phase III, the CO₂ Reuse Program, will prepare post-combustion CO₂ for reuse and support the economical assessment and demonstration of CO₂ conversion technologies onsite, such as CO₂-injected concrete and fly ash.

Funding for the first two phases is complete and development of Phase I is underway. Phase I will begin operation in 2019 followed by Phase II and III in 2020.

Japan: Taiheiyo Cement says it has started the country’s first carbon capture and storage (CCS) test at its Fujiwara plant in Inabe, in conjunction with the Ministry of Environment. It is testing a chemical absorption method on kiln exhaust gases at the plant. Further installations on the project will continue during January 2019.

One graph the United Nations’ (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on Global Warming of 1.5°C didn’t include this week was what happens if the world just doesn’t bother. It’s probably just as well since warming of 1.5°C is likely to happen between 2030 and 2052 at the current rate of climate mitigation efforts. If they had included such as diagram, it likely would have had a ominous red line hurtling skywards like a rollercoaster track just before the screams start.

The giant paper study is really about comparing and contrasting the different impacts and responses to a 1.5°C and a 2°C rise. One taste of what the higher rise threatens is, “limiting global warming to 1.5°C instead of 2°C could result in around 420 million fewer people being frequently exposed to extreme heatwaves, and about 65 million fewer people being exposed to exceptional heatwaves."

The cement industry gets a look-in with an acknowledgment that the sector contributes a ‘small’ amount (5%) of total industrial CO₂ emissions. It then breaks the entire industrial sector’s mitigation strategies down to (a) reductions in the demand, (b) energy efficiency, (c) increased electrification of energy demand, (d) reducing the carbon content of non-electric fuels and (e) deploying innovative processes and application of carbon capture and storage (CCS).

Speaking generally, phasing out coal, electrification and saving energy in mechanisms like waste heat recovery is predicted to get industry only so far. Yet from here even skirting over 1.5°C but below 2°C is ‘difficult to achieve’ without the, “major deployment of new sustainability-oriented low-carbon industrial processes.” Such new process include full oxy-fuelling kilns for clinker production, which have not been tested at the industrial scale yet. Likewise, CCS is seen as a major part of keeping warming below 2°C with a target of 3 Gt CO₂/yr by 2050. Some reality is present though when the report says that the development of such projects has been slow, since only two large-scale industrial CCS projects outside of oil and gas processing are in operation and that cost is high. It even posits a value of up to US$188t/CO₂ (!) for the cost of CO₂ avoided from a Global CCS Institute report.

None of this is new to cement producers. The real debate is how to get there without wiping out the industry. In his address to the recent VDZ conference, Christian Knell, the president of the German Cement Works Association (VDZ), highlighted that meeting climate change goals was leading to ‘considerable’ costs for the cement industry. He then called for policy-related support to on-going research projects into CO₂ mitigation technology.

The bit that the IPCC doesn’t go into is how much those five steps to the industrial sector will cost cement producers and, vitally, who will pay for it. For example, taking a cement plant’s co-processing rate to 70% and building a waste-heat recovery system, might cost around US$30m. The Low Emissions Intensity Lime And Cement (LEILAC) Consortium’s Calix’s direct CO₂ separation process pilot at the Lixhe cement plant in Belgium has funding of about Euro20m. Rolling all three of these measures out to the world’s 2300 cement plants would cost over US$100bn and it would take more than a decade. Beware, the financial figures here are rough estimates and may be way out. The point remains that the implementation costs will not be trivial.

Industry advocates have started in recent years to push back against the climate lobby by highlighting the essential nature of concrete to the modern world. The IPCC barely mentioned this aspect of cement’s contribution to society suggesting recycling, using more renewable materials, like wood, and resorting to the mitigation strategies detailed above. Building new cities out of wood is not inconceivable but CCS seems more likely to solve the climate problem at this stage. Manufacturing the cement that becomes concrete may create CO₂ emissions but it has also built the modern world and raised living standards universally. No cement means no civilisation. There is, at present, no alternative.

Instead of leaving this discussion at an impasse, it is worth reflecting on the last week in the industry’s news. An Indian cement company is importing fly ash, several companies are opening or preparing cement grinding plants, a coal ash extraction pilot project is running, a waste heat recovery unit has opened at a plant in Turkey and a producer is getting ready to co-process tyres as a fuel in Oman. All of these stories are proof that change is happening. The trick for policymakers is to keep prodding the cement sector in this direction without disrupting the good things the industry does for people’s lives through sustainable housing and infrastructure.

The November 2018 issue of Global Cement Magazine will include an exclusive article by Mahendra Singhi, the CEO of Dalmia Cement, about his company’s CO₂ mitigation efforts.

The 2nd FutureCem Conference on CO₂ reduction strategies for the cement industry will take place in May 2019 in London, UK.

Germany: Environmental data from the German Cement Works Association (VDZ) show that average nitrogen dioxide emissions (NO₂) from cement production dropped below 300mg/Nm³ in 2017. The value has more than halved since 2000. Other data from the ‘Environmental Data of the German Cement Industry 2017’ report shows that fossil fuels usage by the cement industry fell to 35% in 2017 compared to 45.6% in 2008.

"By consistently promoting the development of clinker-efficient cements, German cement manufacturers are noticeably reducing the carbon footprint as compared to traditional Portland cements," said VDZ President Christian Knell.

Knell also warned that the costs of carbon capture technologies should not be allowed to jeopardise the competitiveness of domestic cement manufacturers and give rise to ‘undesirable’ carbon leakage effects. The industry is currently researching methods to further reduce CO₂ emissions such as carbon capture, storage and utilisation techniques, but it is dependent on external financing.

18 German cement manufacturers with a total of 46 cement plants are members of the VDZ. The local industry employs around 8000 people.

Norway: The government has proposed continuing funding for Norcem’s CO₂ capture and storage project at its Brevik cement plant. The announcement follows an assessment by the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy of local carbon capture, transport and storage (CCS) projects. The government has proposed to fund FEED studies (Front End Engineering and Design studies) with around Euro8m in 2018. The total funding for the demonstration project in 2018 amounts to Euro29m, including funds transferred from 2017. The proposed funds for 2018 will cover FEED studies of CO₂ transport, storage and up to two capture facilities.

“Of the three CO₂ capture projects evaluated, Norcem has the best conditions for a successful implementation. Norcem has demonstrated project execution abilities and relatively low cost per tonne CO₂ captured compared to the other two capture projects. The cement industry is also a significant contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions,” said the government in a statement Norcem, HeidelbergCement local subsidiary, which sbeat other projects by Yara and Fortum Oslo Varme to the funding.

China: Anhui Conch has spent over US$7.9m on a 50,000t CO₂ capture and purification pilot project at its Baimashan cement plant in Anhui province. The unit is scheduled to start operation in the first half of 2018. The group has started the project in order to participate in the government’s ‘Intended Nationally Determined Contributions’ CO₂ emission reduction initiative.

China: Anhui Conch’s sales revenue grew by 35% year-on-year to US$11.9bn in 2017 from US$8.85bn in 2016. Its net profit nearly doubled to US$2.51bn from US$1.36bn. The cement producer said that it had, ‘seized the favourable opportunities arising from the state’s further deepening of supply-side structural reform and the promotion of off-peak season production.’

During the year Anhui Conch opened eight cement grinding plants including Quanjiao Conch Cement, Anhui Xuancheng Conch Cement and Nantong Conch Cement. Outside of China the company completed phase two of its Merak grinding plant in Indonesia and started cement production and completed construction of the North Sulawesi Conch plant in Indonesia and the Battambang Conch plant in Cambodia. The units in Indonesia and Cambodia are due to start production in 2018. A new plant, Luang Prabang Conch, is being built in Laos and preliminary work on projects at Volga Conch in Russia, Vientiane in Laos and Mandalay in Myanmar is underway. At the end of 2017 Anhui Conch says it has a clinker and cement production capacity of 246t/yr and 335Mt/yr respectively.

The cement producer also announced that its Baimashan Cement plant was intending to start operating a CO₂ collection and purification pilot project in the first half of 2018. The initiative is part of the group’s moves to implement the government’s low-carbon development strategy.

US: CarbonCure has demonstrated an integrated CO₂ capture and utilisation (CCU) process from cement for concrete production in January 2018 at Cementos Argos’ Roberta plant in Calera, Alabama. The consortium - comprising Carbon Cure, Sustainable Energy Solutions (SES), Praxair, Cementos Argos and Kline Consulting - says it is the world’s first project to collect cement kiln CO₂ for subsequent utilisation downstream in concrete production and construction.

CO₂ emissions from the Roberta cement plant were captured by SES’ Cryogenic CO₂ Capture technology, transported by Praxair and reused in Cementos Argos' Glenwood, Atlanta concrete operations equipped with CarbonCure's CO₂ utilisation technology. The concrete manufactured with the waste CO₂ from the Roberta cement plant was then used in a local construction project in the greater Atlanta area. Design partners and fellow members of CarbonCure’s Carbon XPRIZE team such as LS3P Architects, Uzun + Case Structural Engineering, and Walter P Moore Structural Engineers completed the end to end integrated solution by creating demand for CarbonCure concrete products in the marketplace. Kline Consulting oversaw the commissioning and reporting of the industrial demonstration.

The project was an extension of Team CarbonCure's participation in the US$20m NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE Challenge, which incentivises and accelerates the development of integrated CCU technologies and new markets that convert CO₂ emissions from coal and natural gas power generation into valuable products.

Lhoist’s Jean Marbehant pretty much summed up the bind the cement and lime industries face from the tightening COP21 climate agreement when he said, “We produce CO₂… and our by-product is lime.” He made the comment at a ground breaking event that HeidelbergCement hosted this week for a new carbon capture pilot project at the CBR Lixhe cement plant in Belgium. The project with the Low Emissions Intensity Lime And Cement (LEILAC) Consortium will test Australian company Calix’s direct CO₂ separation process at an operational cement plant for two years at a pilot level scale.

Previously the technology has been used by Calix in the magnesite calcining sector in Australia. Now it will be trialled at 10t/hr of raw material for cement production and 8t/hr of ground limestone in a 60m tall direct separation reactor that is about to be built next to the cement plant’s pre-heater tower. The process has a target to capture up to 95% of process CO₂ emissions. Construction is scheduled to be completed in 2018 and then followed by two years of operation and testing until the end of 2020. At this point the Euro12m funding ends but the next steps, if agreed, would be to test the process at a commercial scale for lime production and a large scale demonstration at a cement plant by 2025. Full scale commercial application at a cement plant would then happen by 2030.

The Innovation in Industrial Carbon Capture Conference was built around the various carbon capture initiatives that HeidelbergCement is involved with. The other big pilot is the oxyfuel project it is running with LafargeHolcim and the European Cement Research Academy (ECRA). As ECRA’s Volker Hoenig explained, this project is now set to move to the pilot scale at two cement plants in 2020 at a cost of Euro90m. The plants, in Italy and Austria, have been chosen so that the testing can start at a ‘simple’ plant and then move to a more complicated one. The former site, Colleferro, has a spare unused kiln that doesn’t use alternative fuels, making the testing less complicated. The latter, Retznei, does co-process alternative fuels and it also has a kiln bypass system. It’s also worth noting that Calix’s direct separation process is intended to be compatible with an oxyfuel kiln. Other technologies were also previewed at the conference such as the Cleanker calcium looping project, the CO2MIN mineral carbonation project, the Carbon8 process to make aggregates from flue gas and HeidelbergCement’s experiences with growing microalgae.

The event to mark the start of the pilot was an optimistic one but the cement and lime producers like Jean Marbehant have no illusions about the cliff face-steep challenge that meeting the CO₂ emissions reduction targets the Paris agreement potentially demands. One slide Marbehant discussed in his presentation placed the CO₂ marginal abatement cost for carbon capture at Euro90/t. However, since the European Union (EU) Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) currently places the cost of CO₂ at Euro9/t the real question about the future of carbon capture is about who is going to pay the bill. Albert Scheuer, a board member of HeidelbergCement, made it clear how his company thinks the cost should be divided when he said that its end product was concrete and he explained just how much cement and concrete everyone uses in their lifespan. He may not have said that we all need to pay but he certainly made it feel that way. The future of carbon capture it seems may be a bit like a group of friends awkwardly deciding how to split the bill after a meal.

One speaker at the LEILAC event used the phrase ‘no silver bullet’ to describe how industrial CO₂ emissions could be cut and how Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) might be used. Perhaps more tellingly though has been the emergence of a new acronym that seems to be doing the rounds at the European Parliament, of ‘Carbon Capture and Something.’ That ‘something’ here is of critical importance as it can either put up or decrease the price that CCS will add to cement production. So, whilst moving to Carbon Capture and Something might suggest that legislators are starting to get realistic about what carbon capture might actually be able to do, it might also indicate a naïve lack of understanding of how hard cutting CO₂ emissions is from essential industries that produce CO₂ from their core process.

The challenge for cement producers in this kind of environment is deciding how far they should go towards exploring CO₂ reduction strategies whilst governments are not being precise about how they intend to meet their targets. Going first might bring an innovator advantages if the legislation toughens up, but the early cost is high. HeidelbergCement and others are definitely doing ‘something’ but commercial applications are at least a decade away at current funding levels. And that timescale doesn’t include rolling out the new technologies across the entire industry. Despite this it was reassuring to hear the director of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Climate Action say that his outfit didn’t want to reduce cement production, only CO₂ emissions. This was ‘something’ cement producers want to hear.