Displaying items by tag: oxyfuel

Germany: The Westküste100 green hydrogen project has received funding approval from the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs. The plan is backed by an investment of Euro89m, with Euro30m of this total approved for the project’s launch in August 2020. The initiative intends to produce green hydrogen, transport it in the gas network, use it in industrial processes and to interlink different material cycles within the existing infrastructure. The consortium brings together ten partners: EDF Deutschland, Holcim Deutschland, OGE, Ørsted Deutschland, Raffinerie Heide, Heide’s municipal utility, Thüga and ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions, along with the Region Heide development agency and the Westküste University of Applied Sciences.

“An electrolysis plant with a capacity of 700MW - this is our vision and the next milestone in implementing the development targets laid down in the national hydrogen strategy by 2030,” said Jürgen Wollschläger, managing director of Raffinerie Heide and coordinator of the Westküste100 project.

The funding approval enables work to begin on the first phase of the project, which is set to run for five years. A newly formed joint venture, H2 Westküste, comprising EDF Deutschland, Ørsted and Raffinerie Heide, is to build a 30MW electrolyser which will produce green hydrogen from offshore wind energy and provide information on the operation, maintenance, control and grid compatibility of the equipment.

In a later stage of the project hydrogen from both electrolysis and CO₂ from a cement plant in Schleswig-Holstein will be used in the process. During the initial phase of the Westküste100 project preparations will be made for converting the Lägerdorf cement plant to an oxyfuel combustion process.

Thorsten Hahn, chief executive officer (CEO) and chairman of Holcim (Deutschland) said, “For us, as a manufacturer of building materials, the funding approval is a key milestone on the way to decarbonising cement production. Now all of us involved in Westküste100 must move forward quickly, decisively and dynamically in order to achieve our ultimate goal of cross-sectoral coupling on a large industrial scale in the coming years.”

If you needed a sign that the cement industry has become serious about carbon capture it was the presence of two organisations offering CO₂ transport and storage capacity in northern Europe at last week’s Innovation in Industrial Carbon Capture Conference 2020 (IICCC). Both Norway’s Northern Lights and the Rotterdam CCUS (Project Porthos) were busy at their stands during the event’s exhibition. Meanwhile, Cembureau, the European Cement Association, said that it will work on finding other potential storage sites for CO₂ and on identifying existing gas pipelines that could be converted. The industry is planning what to do about CO₂ transport and storage.

As with the previous IICCC event in 2018 the heart of the programme was the Low Emissions Intensity Lime And Cement (LEILAC) project. Since then Calix’s 60m tall pilot Direct Separation Calciner unit has been built at the HeidelbergCement cement plant in Lixhe and has been tested since mid-2019. Early results look promising, with CO₂ separation occurring, calcined material produced and the tube structure and mechanical expansion holding up. Problems with thermocouples failing, blockages and recarbonation at the base of the tube have been encountered but these are being tackled in the de-bottlenecking phase. Testing will continue well into 2020 and plans for the next demonstration project at another cement plant in Europe are already moving ahead. LEILAC 2 will see industry partners Cimpor, Lhoist, Port of Rotterdam and IKN join Calix, HeidelbergCement and other research partners to work together on a larger 0.1Mt/yr CO₂ separation pilot scheduled for completion in 2025.

Alongside this HeidelbergCement presented a convincing vision of a carbon neutral future for the cement industry at the IICCC 2020. It may not be what actually happens but the building materials producer has a clear plan across the lifecycle chain of cement. It is researching and testing a variety of methods to capture CO₂ process emissions, is looking at supply chains and storage sites for the CO₂ and is working on recycling concrete as aggregates and cementations material via recarbonation. In terms of carbon capture technology, an amine-based industrial scale CCS unit looks likely to be built at Norcem’s Brevik plant in the early 2020s. HeidelbergCement’s other joint-research projects – direct separation and oxyfuel – are further behind, at the pilot and pre-pilot stages respectively. Each technology looks set to offer progressively better and cheaper CO₂ capture as they come on line.

Or put another way, cement companies in Europe could build industrial scale amine-based carbon (CC) capture plants now. Yet the game appears to be to wait until the cost of CCS falls through new technology versus the rising emissions trading scheme (ETS) price of CO₂. CC is expected to become economically feasible in a decade’s time, sometime in the 2030s. At which point there might be an upgrade boom as plants are retrofitted with CC units or new production lines are commissioned. Other ways of reducing the cement industry’s CO₂ emissions, of course, are being explored by other companies such as further reducing the clinker factor through the use of calcined clays (LC3 and others), solar reactor or electric-powered kilns and more.

The usual problem of how the construction industry can cope with a higher cost of cement was acknowledged at IICCC 2020 but it is largely being worked around. Higher priced cement poses competitive issues for specifiers and construction companies but it is widely expected to result in price rises below 5% for most residential end users. In the short-term government policy such as requiring low carbon cement in state building projects could stimulate the market. The start of this process can be seen already with the use of slag cements in various infrastructure projects.

Hans Bergman, Head Unit ETS Policy Development at the Directorate-General for Climate Action (DG Clima) partly addressed the cost issue by talking about the EU Green Deal. The EU wants to meet its new targets but it also wants to let gross domestic product (GDP) rise whilst greenhouse emissions fall. The EU ETS is its principle vehicle for this but the commission is wary of changes, such as making modifications linked to CCS, in case it undermines the system. Discussions are ongoing as the work on the Green Deal continues.

IICCC was a wider forum beyond just what LEILAC is up to. To this extent the CC projects involve multiple partners, including those from other cement companies like Cemex and Tarmac (CRH) in LEILAC and Dyckerhoff (Buzzi Unicem), Schwenk Zement and Vicat in the oxyfuel project. The decarbonisation fair included representatives from Vicat’s FastCarb project and Polimi’s Cleanker. Speakers from the European Climate Foundation, Acatech, INEA, TCM, SINTEF and Lhoist were also present.

During one speaker discussion Calix was described as the 'Tesla' of industrial CC by one speaker, who said that, “…there is a genuine competitive opportunity for those bold enough to grasp it.” Calix’s managing director Phil Hodgson enjoyed the accolade but the point was that leading innovation or setting the agenda offers advantages. In the case of industrial CC for the cement industry, change feels a step closer.

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

Austria/Germany/Italy: The European Cement Research Academy (ECRA) has launched its oxyfuel carbon capture pilot projects at HeidelbergCement’s Colleferro plant in Italy and LafargeHolcim’s Retznei plant in Austria. The two locations were chosen form a shortlist of five sites. The pilots will test oxyfuel technology on an industrial scale. The test phase of the research is expected to cost Euro80m and the cement industry has contributed Euro25m towards this. ‘Substantial’ funding from European or national research schemes is being sought.

“The technical feasibility of oxyfuel technology can only be proven in real-scale application, but we have sufficient information from our research to believe that we will obtain a positive result after the trials” said Daniel Gauthier, chairman of ECRA.