Displaying items by tag: pilot

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.”

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.

Honduras: Argos Honduras is set to start a new hydrogen injection process at its integrated Piedras Azules cement plant. During the process, water molecules are split using electricity into hydrogen and oxygen and then injected into the kiln through the main burner. The main objective of this technology is to reduce the use of fossil fuels, CO₂ emissions levels and energy consumption at the plant.

Luis Eduardo Tovar, the manager of Argos Honduras, said “We are proud to be committed to innovation and new technologies that allow us to keep our operation at the forefront of the industry. This project has allowed us to reduce our C0₂ emissions and optimise our processes to become increasingly efficient."

A pilot was previously conducted in conjunction with Portugal-based UTIS. It showed that by using the technology the plant could increase its clinker production and reduce petcoke consumption.

Colombia: Cementos Argos recorded sales of US$1.26bn in the first half of 2022, up by 13% year-on-year from US$1.11bn in the first half of 2021. Its earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) fell by 16% to US$221m from US$264m. The group's US sales accounted for 62% of its revenues during the six-month period. They rose by 5.4% year-on-year to US$776m from US$736m in the first half of 2021. Cementos Argos' US business' EBITDA fell by 25% to US$133m from US$177m. Colombia contributed sales of US$304m, 24% of group revenues, up by 15% year-on-year from US$263m in the first half of 2021.

Cementos Argos' first-half 2022 cement sales totaled 8.17Mt, down by 5.2% from 8.62Mt in the first half of 2021. Its US cement volumes fell by 1.2% to 3.06Mt, its Colombian cement volumes by 6.2% to 2.98Mt and its Caribbean and Central America cement volumes by 22% to 2.13Mt.

Chief executive officer Juan Estaban Calle said "We are convinced of the great opportunity that lies ahead to lead the industry in sustainability and generate greater value for our shareholders and all stakeholders. The calcined clay pilot that we are starting in the USA is another important milestone in our roadmap to produce carbon-neutral concrete by 2050. The results of the second quarter were very positive both in terms of revenue growth and volumes, driven, mainly, by the solidity of demand in the US and the good dynamics of the Colombian economy amidst a challenging situation of high inflation and increase in interest rates."

Greece: Titan Cement Group has successfully started a pilot CO₂ capture demonstration project at its Kamari plant. As part of the RECODE2020 project it said it had reached a CO₂ purity above 99% during initial operation by using ionic liquids as the CO₂ adsorbents. The captured CO₂ is then intended to be utilised by converting it to nanocalcite and additives that can reused in cement production in different ways. The cement producer is also running the CARMOF project at the plant.

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.

Coolbrook has been in the news recently with collaboration deals struck with Cemex and UltraTech Cement. First the Finland-based company officially launched its Roto Dynamic Heater (RDH) technology with a memorandum of understanding signed with Cemex in May 2022. Then, this week, it signed a similar agreement with UltraTech Cement.

The specifics of either agreement are unknown but the target is clearly to build an industrial pilot of an electric kiln – or something like it - at a cement plant. Coolbrook says it has run a pilot of its RDH technology in Finland. Further tests are now scheduled to continue for two years starting from September 2022 at the Brightlands Chemelot Campus at Geleen in the Netherlands. Commercial scale demonstrations are scheduled from 2022 with the hope of commercial use from 2024. Links with Cemex and UltraTech Cement seem to suggest progress. At the same time Coolbrook will be testing its RotoDynamic Reactor (RDR) technology, which promises to electrify the steam cracking process used in plastic manufacturing.

Publically available details on the RDH technology are light. In its promotional material Coolbrook says that it can achieve process temperatures of up to around 1700°C. This is crucial to achieve full clinker formation in a cement kiln. Reaching this temperature with non-combustion style kilns, such as solar reactors, has previously been a problem. Notably, Synhelion and Cemex said in February 2022 that they had managed to produce clinker using concentrated solar radiation. Retrofit possibilities and compact equipment size are also mentioned in the promotional material for the RDH. The former is an obvious attraction but size of equipment footprint is increasingly emerging as a potential issue for cement plants looking to reduce their CO₂ emissions. Rick Bohan from the Portland Cement Association (PCA) presented a summary of the potential and problems of emerging carbon capture and utilisation/storage (CCUS) technologies for cement plants in the US at the Virtual Global CemCCUS Seminar that took place on 14 June 2022. He noted that installing CCUS equipment makes cement plants start to look different (more like petrochemical plants in the view of Global Cement Weekly) and that they may require more space to install it all.

Coolbrook hasn’t been the only organisation looking at kiln electrification. The installation with the most available information on kiln electrification has been the Decarbonate project, led by the VTT, formerly known as the Technical Research Centre of Finland. The project has built a pilot rotary kiln with a length of 8m inside a shipping container. It has a production capacity of around 25kg/hr. The system reportedly uses fixed radiant heating coils around the kiln, surrounded by insulation materials. Early results presented to the 1st Virtual Global CemPower Seminar in late 2021 were that the kiln started up, sufficient calcination was occurring and the system was operated continuously for three days at a temperature of 1000°C with no problems reported. Further research was scheduled to carry on into 2022 with longer trials planned for three different materials.

HeidelbergCement’s subsidiary in Sweden, Cementa, completed a feasibility study on implementing electrified cement production at its Slite plant in 2019. It then said that it was conducting further study with electricity producer Vattenfall as part of CemZero project. This consists of three projects running to 2025. Namely: heat transfer with plasma in rotary kilns; direct separation of carbon dioxide from calcination of carbonate-based raw materials in the production of cement clinker and burnt lime; and carbon dioxide-free products with electrified production - reactivity of cement clinker with secondary additives. HeidelbergCement has since announced plans to build a full scale 1.8Mt/yr carbon capture and storage (CCS) plant at the Slite cement plant by 2030.

How this would fit with any kiln electrification plans is unknown. However, one attraction of moving to an electrical kiln, for all of the projects above, is to cut out the 40 – 50% of a cement plant’s CO₂ emissions that arise from the fuel that is burnt. Taking a kiln electric also makes CO₂ capture easier. Much of the remainder of the CO₂ released comes from the decomposition of limestone during calcination when clinker is created. Substitute out fossil or alternative fuels and the flue gas becomes much purer CO₂.

It is early days for cement kiln electrification but progress is happening both commercially and scientifically. The next step to watch out for will be the first pilot installation at a cement plant. One point to finish with is a comment that Rick Bohan made at the IEEE-IAS/PCA Cement Industry Technical Conference that took place in May 2022: carbon capture is expected to double a cement plant’s energy consumption. Kiln electrification is one potential route for cement production to reach net zero. CCUS is another. If one or both occur then a low carbon future could be a high energy one also.

Watch out for Global Cement’s forthcoming interview with Coolbrook in the September 2022 issue of Global Cement Magazine

For more on CCUS, download the proceedings pack for the Virtual Global CemCCUS Seminar 2022

For more on Synhelion and Cemex read the interview in the December 2020 issue of Global Cement Magazine interview

Mexico: Cemex and Coolbrook have signed a memorandum of understanding to test technology to electrify the cement kiln heating process. Coolbrook says that its Roto Dynamic Heater (RDH) technology can heat a cement kiln to 1700°C using electrical power. If generated from renewable sources this could potentially remove around 45% of the carbon emissions in cement production that normally arise from the use of fossil fuels. The companies expect the technology to be ready for commercial use at an industrial scale in 2024. They will jointly evaluate the best production site to test and develop this technology.

Ilpo Kuokkanen, the executive chair of Coolbrook, said "Coolbrook has set a target to build a comprehensive ecosystem around its revolutionary technology and to test its use in as many industrial processes as fast as possible. Together with Cemex, we can bring the technology to cement production and achieve significant emission reductions in one of the most energy and CO₂-intensive industrial processes.”

Finland-based Coolbrook is a technology and engineering company that is developing processes to replace the burning of fossil fuels in major industrial sectors. Its RDH has potential applications in cement, steel and chemical production process. Its Roto Dynamic Reactor (RDR) is intended to eliminate CO₂ emissions from the steam cracking process used in the production of plastic.

Denmark: FLSmidth has formed a partnership called ECoClay to develop and commercialise the technology needed to electrify the calcination of clay used in cement production. The partners include the Danish Technological Institute, US-based industrial heating specialist Rondo Energy, France-based Vicat, Colombia-based Cementos Argos and the Technical University of Denmark. The project is partly funded by the Energy Technology Development and Demonstration Program (EUDP) under the Danish Energy Agency.

The use of calcined clay in cement production allows cement producers to replace up to 30% of limestone-based clinker, resulting in up to 40% lower CO₂/t in cement produced. By electrifying the process, ideally powered by renewable sources, the ECoClay partnership expects to further reduce emissions by 10% at more uniform conditions that allow processing of a broader range of raw clays.

Based on the shared research and tests on high-temperature electric heat generation, storage solutions and renewable grid integration, the ECoClay partnership will build a pilot plant at FLSmidth’s research and development centre in Denmark. The consortium will seek to demonstrate how the ECoClay process is superior to the conventional combustion processes, has a smaller physical footprint on site and significantly lower emissions of air pollutants. According to the project plan, the ECoClay partners expect to be able to commence construction of the first full-scale electric clay calcination installation by the end of 2025.

Japan: Tokuyama Corporation has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Engineering (MHIENG). Under the agreement, MHIENG will install a carbon capture demonstration plant at the producer's 4.7Mt/yr Nanyo plant in Yamaguchi Prefecture. It plans to commission the trial plant in June 2022 and operate it until March 2023. The supplier hopes to contribute to the early realisation of carbon neutrality in cement and other industrial fields through its work.