Displaying items by tag: ground granulated blast furnace slag
Slashing cement's CO2 emissions Down Under
02 November 2022In Australia and New Zealand, four producers operate a total of six integrated cement plants, with another 13 grinding plants situated in Australia. This relatively small regional cement industry has been on a decades-long trajectory towards ever-greater sustainability – hastened by some notable developments in recent weeks.
Oceania is among the regions most exposed to the impacts of climate change. In Australia, which ranked 16th on the GermanWatch Global Climate Risk Index 2021, destructive changes are already playing out in diverse ways.1 Boral reported 'significant disruption' to its operations in New South Wales and southeast Queensland due to wet weather earlier in 2022. This time, the operational impact was US$17.1m; in future, such events are expected to come more often and at a higher cost.
Both the Australian cement industry and the sole New Zealand cement producer, Golden Bay Cement, have strategies aimed at restricting climate change to below the 2° scenario. Golden Bay Cement, which reduced its total CO2 emissions by 12% over the four-year period between its 2018 and 2022 financial years, aims to achieve a 30% reduction by 2030 from the same baseline. The Australian Cement Industry Federation (CIF)'s 2050 net zero cement and concrete production roadmap consists of the following pathways: alternative cements – 7%; green hydrogen and alternative fuels substitution – 6%; carbon capture – 33%; renewable energy, transport and construction innovations – 35% and alternative concretes – 13%, with the remaining 6% accounted for by the recarbonation of set concrete.
Australia produces 5.2Mt/yr of clinker, with specific CO2 emissions of 791kg/t of clinker, 4% below the global average of 824kg/t.2 Calcination generates 55% of cement’s CO2 emissions in the country, and fuel combustion 26%. Of the remainder, electricity (comprising 21% renewables) accounted for 12%, and distribution 7%. Australian cement production has a clinker factor of 84%, which the industry aims to reduce to 70% by 2030 and 60% by 2050. In New Zealand, Golden Bay Cement's main cement, EverSure general-purpose cement, generates CO2 at 732kg/t of product.3 It has a clinker factor of 91%, and also contains 4% gypsum and 5% added limestone.
Alternative raw materials
Currently, Australian cement grinding mills process 3.3Mt/yr of fly ash and ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS). In Southern Australia, Hallett Group plans to commission its upcoming US$13.4m Port Augusta slag cement grinding plant in 2023. The plant will use local GGBFS from refineries in nearby Port Pirie and Whyalla, and fly ash from the site of the former Port Augusta power plant, as well as being 100% renewably powered. Upon commissioning, the facility will eliminate regional CO2 emissions of 300,000t/yr, subsequently rising to 1Mt/yr following planned expansions. Elsewhere, an Australian importer holds an exclusive licencing agreement for UK-based Innovative Ash Solutions' novel air pollution control residue (APCR)-based supplementary cementitious material, an alternative to pulverised fly ash (PFA), while Australian Graphene producer First Graphene is involved in a UK project to develop reduced-CO2 graphene-enhanced cement.
Golden Bay Cement is investigating the introduction of New Zealand's abundant volcanic ash in its cement production.
Fuels and more
Alternative fuel (AF) substitution in Australian cement production surpassed 18% in 2020, and is set to rise to 30% by 2030 and 50% by 2050, or 60% including 10% green hydrogen. In its recent report on Australian cement industry decarbonisation, the German Cement Works Association (VDZ) noted the difficulty that Australia's cement plants face in competing against landfill sites for waste streams. It described current policy as inadequate to incentivise AF use.
Cement producer Adbri is among eight members of an all-Australian consortium currently building a green hydrogen plant at AGL Energy’s Torrens Island gas-fired power plant in South Australia.
Across the Tasman Sea, Golden Bay Cement expects to attain a 60% AF substitution rate through on-going developments in its use of waste tyres and construction wood waste at its Portland cement plant in Northland. The producer will launch its new EcoSure reduced-CO2 (699kg/t) general-purpose cement in November 2022. In developing EcoSure cement, it co-processed 80,000t of waste, including 3m waste tyres. The company says that this has helped in its efforts to manage its costs amid high coal prices.
Carbon capture
As the largest single contributor in Australia's cement decarbonisation pathway, carbon capture is now beginning to realise its potential. Boral and carbon capture specialist Calix are due to complete a feasibility study for a commercial-scale carbon capture pilot at the Berrima, New South Wales, cement plant in June 2023.
At Cement Australia's Gladstone, Queensland, cement plant, carbon capture is set to combine with green hydrocarbon production in a US$150m circular carbon methanol production facility supplied by Mitsubishi Gas Chemical Company. From its commissioning in mid-2028, the installation will use the Gladstone plant's captured CO2 emissions and locally sourced green hydrogen to produce 100,000t/yr of methanol.
More Australian cement plant carbon capture installations may be in the offing. Heidelberg Materials, joint parent company of Cement Australia, obtained an indefinite global licence to Calix's LEILAC technology on 28 October 2022. The Germany-based group said that the method offers effective capture with minimal operational impact.
Cement Australia 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." It added "The green hydrogen economy is a priority for the Queensland government under the Queensland Hydrogen Industry Strategy.”
Logistics
Australian and New Zealand cement facilities' remoteness makes logistics an important area of CO2 emissions reduction. In Australia, cement production uses a 60:40 mix of Australian and imported clinker, while imported cement accounts for 5 – 10% of local cement sales of 11.7Mt/yr.
Fremantle Ports recently broke ground on construction of its US$35.1m Kwinana, Western Australia, clinker terminal. It will supply clinker to grinding plants in the state from its commissioning in 2024. Besides increasing the speed and safety of cement production, the state government said that the facility presents 'very significant environmental benefits.'
Conclusion
Antipodean cement production is undergoing a sustainability transformation, characterised by international collaboration and alliances across industries. The current structure of industrial and energy policy makes it an uphill journey, but for Australia and New Zealand's innovating cement industries, clear goals are in sight and ever nearer within reach.
References
1. Eckstein, Künzel and Schäfer, 'Global Climate Risk Index 2021,' 25 January 2021, https://www.germanwatch.org/en/19777
2. VDZ, 'Decarbonisation Pathways for the Australian Cement and Concrete Sector,' November 2021, https://cement.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Full_Report_Decarbonisation_Pathways_web_single_page.pdf
3. Golden Bay Cement, 'Environmental Product Declaration,' 12 May 2019, https://www.goldenbay.co.nz/assets/Uploads/d310c4f72a/GoldenBayCement_EPD_2019_HighRes.pdf
Royal White Cement to establish new Houston cement terminal
02 September 2022US: Royal White Cement has leased a site on the Houston Ship Channel in Houston, Texas. Local press has reported that the company plans to build its second cement terminal in the city there. Houston Peninsula Terminals will operate unloading systems for the storage of cement across three facilities at the site. It is also equipped with multiple railway tracks and heavy truck loading facilities. Royal White Cement owner Marcel Fadi said that the move would help the producer to expand its footprint in Houston and beyond.
Fadi said "We have long operated in the Houston market, but this direct access to storage and bulk unloading along the channel will provide greater efficiencies and flexibility, allowing Royal White Cement to handle and store approximately 100,000t of multiple cementitious products such as slag, grey cement, and white cement."
Sri Lanka: Insee Cement has broken ground on its construction of a 45,000m3-capacity storage facility at Hambantota International Port. When commissioned in early 2023, the facility will store ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS) for use in Insee Cement's cement production. Daily News has reported the cost of the facility's construction as US$3m. At 17,300m2, the Hambantota storage facility will be the largest warehouse at any port in Sri Lanka.
Insee Cement chair and CEO Nandana Ekanayake said "Hambantota Port is a vital link in our raw materials supply chain. Insee Cement has been using this port since 2018 and so far we have cleared around 1.7Mt of bulk cargo through the port, of which we did a little over 1Mt in 2021. Today, we laid this foundation as another step to strengthen our partnership with Hambantota International Port Group." Ekanayake concluded "We see great potential in developing channels through Hambantota International Port and we will double our investment in the future."
Loesche publishes first Sustainability Report
11 August 2022Germany: Loesche has published its Sustainability Report of its performance in 2021. The supplier’s Scope 1 and 2 CO2 emissions declined by 6.1% year-on-year to 229t from 244t in 2020 and by 19% over the two years from 2019, when they totalled 282t. It reduced the share of Scope 2 emissions in the figure to 40% from 41% in 2020 and 45% in 2019.
Loesche offers emissions-reducing products to the global cement industry under the label Greenkey Solutions. These include its A/Fuel and H/combust ranges for alternative fuels and green hydrogen upgrades, its C/Clay range for clay calcining and grinding, its Digital/Ready 4.0! range for predictive process optimisation and smart asset management, its E/Slag range for ground granulated blast furnace slag upgrades and its S/Crete range for waste concrete recycling, as well as audits for retrofits. Together, Loesche says that its products can reduce the global cement sector’s carbon footprint by 90%. Within this, Loesche believes that calcined clay technology alone can reduce cement’s CO2 emissions by 40% and its energy demand by 21%.
Loesche said that its launch during the year of its H2Optimum grinding bed spraying system can reduce grinding mills’ water consumption by 50%.
Update on slag cements, July 2022
13 July 2022A trio of slag cement stories have been in the sector news this week with reports from Australia, France and Sri Lanka. Of note from the first two reports is a focus on supplies of slag.
The first concerns Hallett Group’s US$80m supplementary cementitious materials (SCM) project in South Australia. This will see the company process slag and fly ash sourced from sites in the region to manufacture blended cement products and standalone SCMs. These will be principally milled, blended and distributed from a site at Port Augusta. However, an additional distribution site at Port Adelaide is also planned that can both import and export the company’s products in a bid to cut down on supply chain risk, particular for its mining customers. The company says it will replace up to 1.15Mt/yr of cement when fully operational, although initial production looks set to be about a third of this based on local media reports. Commissioning of the Port Adelaide distribution hub is scheduled for May 2023, following by the Whyalla Granulator in January 2024 and the Port Augusta processing plant in June 2024. Pointedly, Hallett Group is explicit about where is plans to source its SCMs from: Nyrstar Port Pirie and, potentially, Liberty GFG.
The second slag-themed story hails from France, where Hoffmann Green Cement has acquired ABC Broyage, which operates a slag grinding plant in North Dordogne. Like the project in Australia above, Hoffmann Green is focused on its supply chain. With this acquisition it will be able to grind its own blast furnace slag instead of buying it. Raw blast furnace slag will be imported via the port of La Rochelle where the company has storage silos. It will then be ground at the former ABC Broyage site and sent on to Hoffmann Green’s H1 and H2 production sites, located at Bournezeau in the Vendée region. Finally it will use it to manufacture its H-UKR and H-IONA cement products. There is no mention of how much the acquisition is costing Hoffman Green. Instead the emphasis, according to company founders Julien Blanchard and David Hoffmann, is very much to, “strengthen our control over our supply and secure our margins in the current highly inflationary context.”
Finally, the week’s third slag-themed cement story is from Sri Lanka, where local media reports that Insee Cement has started producing Portland Composite Cement, using SCMs such as slag, at its Ruhunu grinding plant. This story follows the trend of cement producers around the world switching to greater usage of blended cements, often for sustainability reasons. Unfortunately, political events in Sri Lanka are overshadowing everything else locally, with the president having fled amid social unrest provoked by the ongoing and severe economic crisis. To this end Insee Cement has astutely also donated medical supplies this week to the intensive care unit at the Colombo National Hospital.
These slag stories are important for the cement sector can be demonstrated by a recent update to the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research - Oslo’s (CICERO) research on global CO2 emissions from cement production. When it published its estimate for 2021 it found that overall emissions were 2.6Bnt in 2021 or just over 7% of the world’s total CO2 output. What is worse though, is that its data suggests that cement-based emissions have steadily grown year-on-year from 1.2Bnt in 2002. Apart from a dip in 2015 they have kept on rising! This can mostly be attributed to the growth of the Chinese cement industry in the early 2000s suggesting that a tipping point may be reached in the current decade as lowering cement production CO2 intensity finally kicks in.
Slag and other SCM-based blended cements fit in here as they are one of the ‘easiest’ ways to reduce the clinker factor of cement and concrete and thereby reduce the sector’s CO2 levels. Hence they keep popping up on the various roadmaps and reports for the cement industry to reach net zero. The flipside of this however is that slag is becoming harder to source as the demand for granulated blast furnace slag increases and less new steel plants get built, especially in North America and Europe. Hence the focus on the supply of slag in the first two news stories above. Blended cements may be the future but getting there will be far from simple.
Australia: Hallett Group plans to establish a slag cement grinding plant in Port Augusta, South Australia. Magnet News has reported the cost of the project as US$83.9m, towards which the producer has received US$13.4m in government funding. The plant will produce cement using South Australian ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS) from Nyrstar’s Port Pirie and Liberty Primary Steel’s Whyalla steel refineries and fly ash from the site of the former Port Augusta power plant. Its operations will be 100% renewably powered. An accompanying new distribution facility at Port Adelaide will ship the cement to markets. The project will create 50 new jobs.
When the Port Augusta grinding plant becomes operational in 2023, its products will reduce regional CO2 emissions by 300,000t/yr, subsequently rising to 1Mt/yr, according to the company’s expansion plans.
Hallett Group chief executive officer Kane Salisbury said "We're talking about 1% of the entire country's 2030 [CO2 reduction] commitment, delivered through this project." Salisbury added "We're looking at turning South Australia into a global leader in manufacturing green cement."
UK: Aggregate Industries and Coomtech have partnered to develop low-energy kinetic drying technology for pulverised fuel ash (PFA) from power plant. The partnership will see Aggregate Industries use Coomtech’s kinetic dryers in its PFA processing, as part of its effort towards increasing the volume of waste materials incorporated in its products to 3Mt/yr from 1.5Mt/yr by 2025. The project has attracted funding from the UK government Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).
Chief commercial officer Chris Every said “We’re delighted to have the support of Aggregate Industries in this grant project. Coomtech is especially pleased to have the business’ ongoing technical and commercial input to the project operation and analysis of performance. In addition, the opportunity to work together with a brand that is leading the way in creating new materials that will prove fundamental to the future of the construction sector and meet net zero objectives.” Every continued “The added benefit of our new drying technology is its flexibility - providing the potential to dry a wide range of materials being considered to aid the greening of the cement industry, including limestone, ground blast furnace slag (GBFS), natural pozzolans and other crushed and milled minerals that can offer an activated character to combine in cement and concrete mixes.”
France: Hoffmann Green Cement Technologies has acquired ABC Broyage, which operates a slag grinding plant in North Dordogne. The producer says that ABC Broyage will import granulated blast furnace slag (GBFS) via La Rochelle and supply ground GBFS to its H1 and H2 green cement plants in Bournezeau. This will give Hoffmann Green Cement Technologies self-sufficiency in its raw materials processing.
Co-founders Julien Blanchard and David Hoffmann said “Managing our supply chain has always been one of Hoffmann Green's strategic priorities. After securing our supplies of co-products and their storage, we are now focusing on optimising their processing through the acquisition of ABC Broyage and the development of vertical integration.” Blanchard and Hoffmann noted that, besides strengthening the company’s control over its raw materials supply, ABC Broyage’s slag grinding capacity also secures its margins in the ‘current highly inflationary context.’
India: Three new Indian concrete companies have separately secured agreements for the use of Finland-based Betolar’s Geoprime alkali-activated slag and fly ash additive. Reuters News has reported that the companies are Balaiji Cement Products, Shiv Tiles and SNEH Precast. Engineering company Godrej & Boyce has also signed a letter of intent with the supplier for pilot production of concrete blocks, paving slabs and other elements.
Betolar expects producers to achieve global concrete production volumes of 250,000t/yr of concrete containing Geoprime by 2023.
Brazil: The Falcão Bauer Quality Institute (IFBQ) has certified LafargeHolcim Brasil’s CP III-32 blast furnace slag cement for all construction applications. The certificate confirms that the product offers 50% reduced CO2 compared to the average cement on the Brazilian market.
The Jornal Dia Dia newspaper has reported that sustainability manager Bruno Hallak said “The IFBQ is an institution recognised by the market and this certification confirms that we are on the right track. The production processes and methodologies evaluated can even be reproduced in other units, according to their local characteristics, increasing the gain for the environment.”
LafargeHolcim Brasil previously obtained IFBQ certification for its CP III-40 blast furnace slag cement, which offers a slightly less reduced clinker factor than CP III-32 cement, in 2021. It was the first cement of its type in Brazil to receive the certification. The company produces both cements at its Vitória grinding plant in Espírito Santo.