Displaying items by tag: decarbonisation

US: Cemex USA and RTI International have secured US$3.7m in funding from the US Department of Energy for their Balcones cement plant amine technology carbon capture study. The plant in New Braunfels, Texas, will trial RTI International's non-aqueous solvent (NAS) system, licensed by energy and technology company SLB. Resources News has reported that the system will have a CO₂ capture capacity of 670,000t/yr. RTI International's principal project investigator Vijay Gupta said that NAS capture has a 30 - 40% lower energy penalty than preceding solvent-based technologies.

Cemex USA president Jaime Muguiro said "We remain committed to exploring technologies that can help us meet our targets as we build a more sustainable future. We are striving to cut emissions across all our operations, and this study with RTI International is one of the many steps Cemex is taking to achieve our objectives."

UK: Hanson has announced a 'carbon capture breakthrough' in its use of recycled concrete paste (RCP) in the wet scrubber of its Ribblesdale cement plant in Lancashire. In under 30 minutes, 15t of RCP was able to capture 1.5t of CO₂ from the plant's flue emissions. Carbonated RCP is suitable to replace limestone in cement production.

Hanson's sustainability director Marian Garfield said “The trial was carried out with our parent company Heidelberg Materials’ research and development team, and marks another important milestone in our carbon capture journey."

Mexico: Cemex has announced a raft of new carbon capture projects in Europe and North America. When commissioned, they will bring its total installed CO₂ capture capacity to over 3Mt/yr. The projects consist of three front-end engineering (FEED) studies to scale installations of Australia-based Leilac’s direct separation technology at Cemex cement plants in Germany, Poland and the US; a fourth FEED study for 95% capture installation at the Balcones, Texas, cement plant using RTI International's solvent capture technology and a development partnership for the cement industry's most comprehensive carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) studies at eight further cement plants in Europe, Mexico and the US.

Chief executive officer Fernando González said “CCUS brings together the essence of our strategic priorities: sustainability and innovation. Our Future in Action programme to achieve sustainable excellence and become a net-zero company is all about measurable, verified progress towards the most ambitious decarbonisation pathway in the industry. Although CCUS technologies are not ready to be scaled quite yet, it will take relentless work and innovation to ensure their viability in time to avoid the most damaging effects of climate change.”

Singapore: Parliament passed the Carbon Pricing (Amendment) Bill earlier in November 2022. Under the act, Singapore will raise the price of carbon credits to US$18.17/t from 2024, and to US$32.71/t from 2026. CNA News has reported that the government said that the new legislation will provide the basis for the realisation of carbon credit prices of over US$36.31/t by 2030, in line with the country's 2050 net zero CO2 emissions commitment.

Polluters which emit over 25,000t/yr of CO₂ currently pay US$3.65/t for carbon credits.

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.

Europe: The Carbon Negative Biofuels from Organic Waste (Carbiow) project has received EU funding under the Horizon Europe initiative. Carbiow seeks to develop a dense, dry homogenous marine and aviation biofuel by carbonising gasification ash with oxygen and captured CO₂ from cement plants. 12 consortium members from the Benelux, Germany, Nordic countries, Slovenia and Spain are participating in the project.

Germany: The Catch4Climate project says it is ready to build an oxyfuel pilot unit at Schwenk Zement’s Mergelstetten plant following approval by the Stuttgart Regional Council. The project comprises Dyckerhoff, Heidelberg Materials, Schwenk Zement and Vicat, and It has set up a research company called CI4C to run it. Over Euro120m will be invested towards building a dedicated 450t/day production line to test the oxyfuel process. Jürgen Thormann, the Technical Managing Director of CI4C, said that this is the first time a so-called ‘pure’ oxyfuel process will be used for CO₂ capture. At a later stage in the project the consortium plans to use the captured CO₂ to produce so-called ‘reFuels’, climate-neutral synthetic fuels such as kerosene for aircraft, with the help of renewable electrical energy. Commissioning of the unit is scheduled for mid-2024.

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.

Europe: Ireland-based Ecocem and seven other European sustainable technology companies have launched the Cleantech Scale-Up Coalition, with the backing of green investment funding network Breakthrough Energy. The coalition will work to contribute to European climate neutrality, energy autonomy and industrially competitiveness. Other participants' fields include carbon capture, green hydrogen technologies, transport electrification, batteries and recycling.

Ecocem's managing director Donal O’Riain said “Scalable, low carbon cements, which can decarbonise the European cement industry by 50% by 2030, are ready to deploy today. To do so, they need to be rapidly industrialised. This coalition, which allows Ecocem to combine forces with other world-class companies, will enable our ambition by working to remove the barriers to an accelerated decarbonisation of European, and global, industry.”

Germany/Australia: Calix subsidiary Leilac has concluded a licence agreement with Heidelberg Materials for use of its carbon capture technology. The cement producer holds the licence indefinitely and for all operations across the globe. It said that Leilac’s technology offers effective capture of unavoidable cement plant CO₂ emissions with minimal operational impact.

Heidelberg Materials currently has one Leilac system installed at its Lixhe plant in Belgium. It expects to commence construction of a second unit at its Hanover plant in Germany in 2023. Together, the installations will be able to capture 125,000t/yr of CO₂. The producer says that both projects pave the way for future full-scale deployment of Leilac’s carbon capture model.