Displaying items by tag: oxyfuel

Sinoma International Engineering revealed this week that it has signed a Euro218m contract to supply a new clinker production line for Holcim Belgium. The scope of the deal covers building the new line from limestone unloading via train to clinker transportation and storage. Provisional acceptance and first clinker are stipulated to occur within about four years, by late 2027. Holcim Belgium operates the Obourg Plant, its only integrated unit in the country, and the unit has been preparing to build a new line as part of its Go4Zero project.

Two main points compete for one’s attention with the project at the Obourg Plant. Firstly, this may be the first time a large Europe-based cement producer has publicly contracted a China-based supplier to build a new production line. Secondly, the new line is part of a process to first replace two wet kilns at the site with a dry kiln. This is part of a grand plan at the site to add oxyfuel technology to the plant and then start capturing most of the CO₂ emitted for sequestration in the North Sea.

On the first point, China-based Sinoma International Engineering reported to the Shanghai Stock Exchange in early December 2023 that it had signed a contract for the project. Holcim Belgium has not said that it has appointed the subsidiary of CNBM but this is not unusual. Buyers are at liberty to name suppliers, or not as may be the case. Holcim has been talking about the Go4Zero project for several years though, so appointing a lead contractor is not surprising.

Yet, some cement companies in Europe have previously been circumspect about revealing the use of China-based suppliers. Lafarge France, for example, did not appear to publicly name the involvement of Sinoma International Engineering and its subsidiaries on the construction of a new line at its Martres-Tolosane cement plant between 2019 and 2022, although Lafarge Poland did say in 2020 that it had contracted China Triumph International Engineering for an upgrade to its Małogoszcz cement plant. No doubt there have been other plant projects in Europe from China-based suppliers that Global Cement Weekly is unaware of. It is also worth considering that just because a lead contractor on a plant project is from a particular country it doesn’t mean that the equipment and other sub-contractors necessarily are. And, of course, to add to the confusion, some Europe-based equipment suppliers are owned by companies based in China.

This leads to the second point. Holcim Belgium’s eventual goal is to set up a full-scale carbon capture, transportation and sequestration (CCUS) operation at Obourg using oxyfuel technology by the end of the 2020s. Spending over Euro200m on building a new (but conventional) production line is not trivial but it is being presented as one step towards creating a cement plant for the net zero age. To this end Holcim Belgium has been less shy in naming its partners for the second phase of the project: Air Liquide; Fluxys; and TotalEnergies. This may be due to the collaborative nature of this phase though and the need to apply for European Union (EU) funding to support it. In July 2023 Holcim disclosed that the EU Innovation Fund had allocated grants for three of its projects including the one at Obourg.

For reference, a number of other full-scale oxyfuel projects have been announced in Europe including in Germany at Heidelberg Materials' Geseke cement plant, Holcim Deutschland's Lägerdorf plant in Germany and Schwenk Zement’s Mergelstetten plant. Another one is planned for Heidelberg Materials’ CBR's Antoing cement plant in Belgium. Most of these are planned for the late 2020s or with pilots sooner. The key bit of information to consider here is that adding oxyfuel technology to a cement kiln (or building one with it to start with) makes it easier to capture CO₂ from the flue gas as it is more concentrated. However, the technology is newer and less-tested than many post-combustion carbon capture methods. Hence, the world’s first full-scale CCUS unit at a cement plant, at Brevik in Norway, will use a post combustion method.

All of this begs the question about where the value will lie in building cement plants for the age of net zero? The planned work at Holcim Belgium’s Obourg Plant pretty much summarises this quandary. Building a cement production line is expensive but the cost of disposing of CO₂ may become the single-biggest driver of whether a plant is profitable or not if governments are serious about reaching net zero. To that end today’s announcement from the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) calling on the parties to “transition away from fossil fuels to reach net zero” is another sign of the increasing effects of the so-called ‘carbon agenda’ upon the cement sector. In which case the companies that can supply equipment to take care of the CO₂ emissions start becoming more important and discussions over who supplies the rest of the kit less so. Naturally, some cement equipment suppliers are already pivoting towards this approach. Others may find different solutions. Whether this works or not is a question for the future. In the mean-time, building new plants is looking increasingly collaborative.

Germany: The EU Innovation Fund has granted funding to the GeZero carbon capture project at Heidelberg Materials' Geseke cement plant in North Rhine-Westphalia. The project consists of a 700,000t/yr carbon capture system and an oxyfuel kiln upgrade. A captive solar power plant will provide energy for the new systems. CO₂ storage partner Wintershall Dea will receive purified liquefied CO₂ from the capture system via its Wilhelmshaven distribution hub for storage under the North Sea.

Heidelberg Materials Germany general manager Christian Knell said “This project sets an important milestone for the cement industry and for effective carbon management in Germany. We are now counting on the tailwind of Germany’s future Carbon Management Strategy and the regulatory framework to come.”

CEO Dominik von Achten added “With GeZero, we will once again show how Heidelberg Materials’ pioneering spirit is paving the way for the decarbonisation of our industry. We will be the first to realise a full CCS chain for the capture, transport and permanent storage of all CO₂ emissions from an inland location in Germany. I appreciate the support of the EU Innovation Fund, which expresses both an important recognition and the required backing from the political side.”

Belgium: Heidelberg Materials has announced an upcoming project called Anthemis at its subsidiary CBR's Antoing cement plant in Hainaut. The project will implement Heidelberg Material's OxyCal model, which combines Oxyfuel and amine-based carbon capture technology. When operational, the system will capture 800,000t/yr of CO₂, reducing the Antoing cement plant's CO₂ footprint by 97%.

Heidelberg Materials chair Dominik von Achten said “We are excited to add yet another pioneering technology to our CCUS project portfolio, and to build on what we have already achieved in terms of research and innovation. From the Antoing plant alone, we will be able to offer more than 15Mt of carbon-free cement to the construction market during the first 10 years of operation." Von Achten concluded "This is a key contribution to Belgium’s transition to net zero greenhouse gas emissions.”

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.

Belgium: Holcim and TotalEnergies have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to work towards the full decarbonisation of the Obourg cement plant. Various energies and technologies will be assessed for the capture, utilisation and sequestration (CCUS) of around 1.3Mt/yr of CO₂ emitted by the unit. The project will include working towards building an oxyfuel switchable kiln as part of an upgrade project at the plant and the transportation and use of the captured CO₂ by TotalEnergies for a synthetic fuel producing scheme and/or deposit in geological storage in the North Sea.

TotalEnergies will also assess the development of renewable projects to power a new electrolyser, which would generate the green hydrogen needed to produce synthetic fuels. This new renewable energy production capacity would also power Holcim’s new oxyfuel kiln. Finally, the oxygen emitted by the electrolyser would be used to fuel the new kiln.

Bart Daneels, the chief executive officer of Holcim Belgium said “Cement industry decarbonisation is extremely challenging because of the process's inevitable CO₂ emissions, which put us firmly in the hard-to-abate sector. CCUS is vital for Obourg to become the first net carbon neutral clinker plant in northwest Europe. We are very happy to work with TotalEnergies to accelerate the development of these CCUS solutions for GO4ZERO. By joining the first movers, we want to set the standards for future clinker manufacturing plants.”

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.

Germany: Holcim Deutschland announced a planned upgrade to its Lägerdorf cement plant’s kiln on 14 July 2022. The producer will install a second generation oxyfuel kiln, which uses an air separation unit to supply oxygen directly, emitting CO₂-rich flue gas. A new carbon capture system will supply captured CO₂ to a synthetic hydrocarbons plant, which will produce methanol for other industrial applications. The upgrade will result in the capture of 1.2Mt/yr
of CO₂ emissions and make Lägerdorf one of the world’s first carbon neutral cement plants, according to Holcim Deutschland.

The project, called Carbon2Business, was among four cement plant projects and 13 other EU-wide projects to win a share of a US$1.81bn EU Innovation Fund funding pot. CEO Thorsten Hahn acknowledged that the awarding of funds was ‘good news for Holcim and all partners working with us to decarbonise cement.’ He said “Climate change means cement change.”

Germany: ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions’ Polysius division says that it has been commissioned by Buzzi Unicem, HeidelbergCement, Schwenk Zement and Vicat to build a pure oxyfuel kiln system at the Mergelstetten cement plant as part of the Cement Innovation for Climate (CI4C) project. No dates of the start of construction or final project commissioning of the industrial trial have been disclosed. CI4C was originally formed in 2019.

The Polysius pure oxyfuel process is a new type of clinker production process in which the otherwise normal ambient air is replaced by pure oxygen in the kiln combustion process. One advantage of the technology is that atmospheric nitrogen is eliminated from the clinker burning process leading to much higher concentrations of CO₂ in the exhaust gas compared to a conventional kiln. As such the process aims to concentrate, capture and reuse almost 100% of the CO₂ produced in a cost-effective manner. The medium-term goal is to further process the captured CO₂ with the help of renewable energy into products such as kerosene for air traffic.

Germany: Two studies looking at how to prepare investments for the conversion to an oxyfuel process have been completed at Hocim’s Germany’s Lägerdorf cement plant. The projects were running with technology partners ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions and Linde. Project Oxyfuel100, part of the Westküste100 initiative, was finalised in mid-April 2021. In addition to the oxyfuel process, the technical and economic feasibility of the downstream CO₂ extraction, processing and forwarding was examined. The results of the feasibility study were reported as being “extremely positive.”

Germany: The Catch4Climate project has moved into the planning stage of its oxyfuel pilot plant at the Mergelstetten cement plant. The group, comprising Buzzi Unicem’s subsidiary Dyckerhoff, HeidelbergCement, Schwenk Zement and Vicat, signed a letter of intent with the state’s prime minister and transport minister in Stuttgart in mid-November 2020.

The consortium intends to build and operate its own demonstration plant on a semi-industrial scale, to use the oxyfuel process to capture CO₂. In the future, the captured CO₂ will be used to produce so-called ‘reFuels’, climate-neutral synthetic fuels such as kerosene for air traffic, with the help of renewable electrical energy.

The cement producers formed CI4C – Cement Innovation for Climate in late 2019. The aim of the Catch4Climate project is to create the basis for a large-scale application of CO₂ capture technologies in cement plants enabling the later use of CO₂ as a raw material in other processes such as a carbon capture and utilisation/storage.