Displaying items by tag: Air Liquide

US: Ash Grove Cement has won funding for a US$15.2m front-end engineering design (FEED) study for a carbon capture installation at its 2Mt/yr Foreman cement plant in Arkansas. Parent company CRH said that the study will run for 24 months from its date of commencement. The project team also includes consultancy and research firms Advanced Resources International and Crescent Resource Information, as well as non-profit interstate policy organisation Southern States Energy Board. Equipment suppliers will include France-based industrial gases company Air Liquide and energy company Sargent & Lundy, while electricity provider Talos will participate as an energy sector stakeholder.

The Foreman cement plant carbon capture FEED study is one of eight projects selected by the US Department of Energy to receive part of a US$189m funding pot for carbon capture demonstrations across US industry.

Belgium: France-based Air Liquide has signed a memorandum of understanding with Holcim to supply and operate a Cryocap Oxy carbon capture unit for the forthcoming upgrade to the Obourg cement plant. The intention is that 95% of the CO₂ generated from the new production line will be captured and then transported via the Antwerp@C export terminal for under-sea sequestration. Air Liquide and Holcim have co-applied for the European Innovation Fund to support the project.

Pascal Vinet, Senior Vice President at Air Liquide Group, said “The decarbonisation of the industry is at the heart of our Advance strategy. We are committed to accompany our customers through providing a wide range of innovative solutions. As an example, Air Liquide's proprietary Cryocap technology is particularly well suited to decarbonise the cement industry.”

France: CRH subsidiary Eqiom expects to complete its carbon capture system installation and kiln upgrade at its Lumbres cement plant under the EU's K6 Programme in early 2028. The project uses Air Liquide's capture technology, whereby purified CO₂ is liquefied for storage or use in building materials production.

Greece/Italy: The Hercules international research project, which has 27 partners from 10 countries, has been launched officially at Milan Polytechnic, Italy. Hercules, an acronym for ‘Heroes in Southern Europe to decarbonise industry with CCUS’ will test new solutions in the CO₂ capture, transport, use and storage value chain and transform them into a scalable industrial process. Buzzi Unicem and Titan Group are two of the 27 partners, alongside waste-to-energy players and developers of advanced CO₂ capture equipment. This includes ‘calcium looping’ technology from Finnish Sumitomo SHI FW and cryogenic purification technology from TPI in Italy.

A part of the pure CO₂ flow will be destined for use in production processes. These include the production of new cementitious materials that could replace conventional concrete, as well as uses in the technical gas sector. Hercules will also investigate the transport of CO₂ from the industrial capture sites to geological storage sites at Ravenna (Eni) and Prinos (Energean). The gas will be handled by Air Liquide and Titan Cement.

Poland: The European Union (EU) Innovation Fund has awarded Euro228m towards the Go4ECOPlanet carbon capture and storage project at Lafarge Poland’s Kujawy cement plant. The project has a total cost of Euro380m.

It will use Air Liquide's Cryocap FG technology to capture the CO₂ at the plant. The CO₂ will be liquefied and transported by rail to a port and then injected into a depleted oil field for permanent storage. The transport and storage of CO₂ once it has left the cement plant will be accomplished by cooperation with other partners with knowledge and experience in the liquefaction, transport and storage of gases. The goal is to create a complete carbon capture and storage industrial and logistics chain. Commissioning of the cement plant upgrade is planned for 2027.

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.

France: Lhoist and Air Liquide have signed a memorandum of understanding with the aim to build a carbon capture unit at Lhoist’s Réty lime plant in Hauts-de-France. Air Liquide wants to build and operate a unit from 2028 using its Cryocap FG (Flue Gas) technology to capture and purify 95% of the lime plant’s CO₂ emissions. The companies have jointly applied for the European Innovation Fund large scale support scheme to pay for the project. This partnership is a step towards the creation of a low-carbon industrial ecosystem in the Dunkirk area.

Lhoist’s ‘Chaux et Dolomies du Boulonnais’ plant in Réty is France’s largest lime production plant. A potential carbon capture unit at the plant could potentially reduce the CO₂ emissions of the plant by more than 600,000t/yr. Captured CO₂ would then be transported to a multimodal CO₂ export hub in Dunkirk, currently under development, and sent to be sequestered in the North Sea as part of the D’Artagnan project, which has received the PCI (Project of Common Interest) label from the European Commission. The implementation of the project will be possible as public funding from European and/or French schemes supporting decarbonisation become available.

France: The European Commission (EC) has awarded funding under its Innovation Fund 2021 for CRH subsidiary Eqiom’s upgrade to its Lumbres, Hauts-de-France, cement plant. The work includes the replacement of a kiln and the installation of a carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) system at the plant, in collaboration with Air Liquide. The producer says that the project is one of seven selected under the EC’s K6 programme of innovation funding in line with the EU Green Deal.

US: LafargeHolcim US has revealed more information about a commercial-scale carbon-capture study based at its integrated Ste. Genevieve cement plant in Missouri. The project aims to deliver a front-end engineering design (FEED) study for a carbon capture retrofit that can separate up to 95% of CO₂ emissions at the plant. The captured CO₂ will be ‘pipeline ready’ for geological storage and analysis of the project socio-economic impact will also be part of the study. The US Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory awarded US$4m to the Prairie Research Institute at the University of Illinois to work on the project in early October 2021. LafargeHolcim and Air Liquide are also making cost share contributions.

The design will use Air Liquide’s Crycocap FG system at the cement plant. LafargeHolcim US says that it combines pressure swing adsorption capabilities with cryogenic refrigeration technologies to achieve high CO₂ capture rates with high CO₂ purity rates. Notably, for a carbon capture project, the Ste. Genevieve plant has one of the largest single clinker kilns in the world.

France: Fives Pillard has appointed Fabien Illy as an executive director. His main role will be to drive the business strategy, the international development of the company and boost its growth.

Illy first started his career at Air Liquide where he worked in its research and development department for combustion and cryogenics. He joined Fives Group in 2015 and has held various positions from sales and business development to management. He holds a master’s degree in thermal engineering from the CentraleSupélec graduate engineering school of Paris-Saclay University in Gif-sur-Yvette, France.

Fives Pillard designs and manufactures burners for the mineral and energy sectors.