Displaying items by tag: CO2

US: Cementos Argos has started incorporating and capturing recycled carbon dioxide (CO₂) in several of the concrete mixtures it produces at its US plants, specifically the ones in Atlanta, Georgia. The CO₂ is collected, stored and taken to the plant by the Canadian company CarbonCure, which developed the batching technology. The gas chemically reacts with the calcium hydroxide and the water of the concrete, making insoluble calcium carbonate.

“We are extremely proud of being the first company in the United States to be able to offer its customers a product with CO₂-capturing and incorporating properties. This concrete, even when demolished, never releases the CO₂ contained within its structure, allowing us to close the gas’ cycle and contribute to making the construction sector more and more sustainable and eco-friendly,” said Jorge Mario Velásquez, CEO of Cementos Argos.

Germany: Joule, a producer of liquid fuels from recycled CO₂, and HeidelbergCement have announced a partnership to explore the application of Joule's technology to mitigate carbon emissions in cement manufacturing. A successful partnership between Joule and HeidelbergCement could result in the co-location of Joule's Helioculture Technology at one or more HeidelbergCement sites around the world.

Since 1990, HeidelbergCement has worked to decrease its carbon emissions, initiating various programmes across the organisation that have reduced emissions by 23%. HeidelbergCement said that its partnership with Joule represents another example of its sustained dedication to leveraging innovative technologies and programmes for climate protection. As part of the agreement, emissions from various HeidelbergCement plants could provide Joule with the waste CO₂ required to feed its advanced Helioculture platform that effectively recycles CO₂ back into fuel.

"We've been focused on lowering carbon emissions for more than two decades and we are excited to take further steps to lower our CO₂ emissions by working with a dedicated organisation with state-of-the-art technology that is committed to protecting the climate," said Jan Theulen, Director of Alternative Resources at HeidelbergCement. "Joule's process, which effectively recycles waste CO₂ into liquid fuels, is a perfect match for HeidelbergCement and our core values and we look forward to starting the journey towards a long-term, mutually beneficial relationship."

Joule's Helioculture process directly and continuously converts sunlight and waste CO₂ into infrastructure-ready fuels, including ethanol and alkanes that serve as highly blendable feedstock for diesel and jet fuel products. Only requiring abundantly available inputs, including sunlight, brackish or sea water and waste CO₂, the process is well suited for global deployment. For organisations like HeidelbergCement, Joule turns a carbon challenge into a carbon solution by capturing and recycling waste CO₂.

"Carbon emissions are a challenge faced by many industries that are of critical importance to everyday life, such as cement," said Brian Baynes, CEO of Joule. "We are pleased to have the opportunity to partner with HeidelbergCement in an attempt to develop a modern, ultra-low carbon cement manufacturing process."

The Cement Sustainability Initiative (CSI) has announced its aim to reduce CO₂ emissions by clinker producers by 20 - 25% by 2030. It made the announcement as part of a new action plan launched on 8 December 2015 at the 2015 Paris Climate Conference (COP21).

Most of the plan follows the CSI's existing aims announced to chime with the on-going COP21 negotiations. The plan depends on a long-term agreement being brokered successfully in Paris at COP21 as a whole. It then recommends policy in each of its key areas to achieve its goals. All of this sits beneath a general policy statement to, '...encourage policies for predictable, objective, level-playing and stable CO₂ constraints and incentives as well as energy frameworks on an international level.'

The Cement Action Plan is part of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development Low Carbon Technology Partnerships initiative (LCTPi). It puts together a series of measures to aspire to reduce CO₂ emissions by 1Gt by 2030 compared to business as usual. However this reduction is dependent on the entire cement industry getting involved, not just the existing 26 CSI members. Together these 26 members represent just a quarter of world cement production.

The drop in emissions is based on the so-called 'best-in-class' CSI company 2020 targets. To reach this the CSI is suggesting actions including focusing on recording Chinese cement industry emissions and energy usage, improving energy efficiency, promoting co-processing of alternative fuels, further lowering the clinker factor of cements, developing new low-energy and low-carbon cements, looking at the entire build chain to reduce emissions and considering other options such as carbon capture and storage. The plan had the support of the CEOs of 16 cement companies at its launch, with CNBM CEO Song Zhiping adding his assent at the event also.

The most prominent step is the clear focus on China for data capture using existing CSI tools such as the CO₂ and Energy Accounting and Reporting Standard for the Cement Industry, the Getting the Numbers Right (GNR) and the Cement Technology Roadmaps. As the CSI puts it, "What gets measured gets managed."

Given that China produces around 60% of the world's cement, according to United States Geological Survey data, the focus on China is essential. Currently the CSI has six Chinese members: CNBM, Sinoma, China Resources, Tianrui Group, West China Cement and Yati Group. Notable exceptions to CSI membership from the world's biggest cement producers include the Chinese producers Anhui Conch and Taiwan Cement, as well as Russia's Eurocement and India's Aditya Birla Group.

So, the CSI has set out its stall ahead of a hoped-for global agreement on climate change at the Paris conference. If some sort of legal agreement is reached then the CSI has its recommendations ready in the wings to hand to policymakers everywhere to promote its aims. If no agreement is reached then the plan loses momentum although pushing forwards makes sense where possible, starting with better CO₂ data reported especially in China.

Problems lie ahead for the CSI whatever happens in Paris given that the LCTPi Cement Action Plan is a series of policy suggestions from only 16 cement producers aiming for a non-binding target. For example, without some sort of world legal agreement there are clear commercial advantages for non-CSI members to burn cheap fossil fuels in their kilns and undercut their more environmentally pious rivals. The sustaining low cost of oil, dipping below US$40/barrel this week, can only aggravate this situation and distract the strategies of fuel buyers away from co-processing upgrades.

Egypt: According to Reuters, Arabian Cement Company has commissioned new alternative fuel processing machinery at its plant in Suez.

The state-of-the-art FLSmidth HOTDISC^TM allows Arabian Cement's plant to rely completely on coal and alternative fuels to run its operations. Moreover, it enables the plant to operate its kilns using alternative fuel materials directly, without the need to pre-treat them. Arabian Cement now has a designed fuel mix of 70% coal and 30% alternative fuels. The alternative fuel that will be used will be a mixture of agricultural wastes, municipal sludge and refuse-derived fuels (RDF). Alternative fuel use is expected to result in around 60,000t/yr of reduced CO₂ emissions.

World: Lafarge has signed an agreement with Solidia Technologies to sell its low-carbon cement and CO₂-cured concrete worldwide. Under the terms of this agreement, Lafarge will have the right to commercialise the process that reduces the carbon footprint of the end-to-end process by up to 70%. The commercial launch will initially take place in some key markets in North America and in Europe for the manufacturing of concrete elements such as paving stones, roof tiles and concrete blocks.

Solidia has developed a new binder made from similar raw materials to Ordinary Portland Cement and produced in a traditional rotary kiln. It is produced at lower temperatures and through a different chemical reaction that generates less CO₂. Used afterwards in the manufacture of precast concrete, Solidia Cement hardens through the addition and absorption of CO₂ in a patented curing process that reduces the overall carbon footprint by up to 70%. Produced at traditional precast concrete manufacturing facilities, Solidia Concrete reaches full strength in less than 24 hours.

Lafarge has worked with Solidia Technologies since 2013 to industrialise this technology. In April 2014, a joint group of Lafarge and Solidia scientists confirmed the reduced carbon footprint and commercial viability of Solidia cement during a full-scale trial at Lafarge's Whitehall cement plant in the US. The cement produced has subsequently been used by a variety of pre-cast customers in North America and Europe to further validate Solidia's curing technology and to produce blocks, pavers and roof tiles for commercial testing. In December 2014, Lafarge invested in Solidia Technologies and joined Solidia's Board of Directors.

China: Beijing, where pollution averaged more than twice China's national standard in 2014, will close the last of its four major coal-fired power plants, China Huaneng Group Corp's 845MW plant, in 2016.

Plants owned by Guohua Electric Power Corp and Beijing Energy Investment Holding Co were closed in March 2015. A fourth major power plant, owned by China Datang Corp, was shut in 2014. The plants will be replaced by four gas-fired stations with the capacity to supply 2.6 times more electricity than the coal plants.

The closures are part of a broader trend in China, which is the world's largest CO₂ emitter. Beijing plans to cut its coal consumption by 13Mt/yr by 2017 from the 2012 level in a bid to slash pollutants. Shutting all the major coal power plants in the city, reducing coal use by 9.2Mt/yr, is estimated to cut CO₂ emissions by 30Mt/yr according to analysts.

China planned to close more than 2000 smaller coal mines in 2013 - 2015, according to Song Yuanming, vice chief of the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety. Closing coal-fired power plants is seen as a critical step in addressing pollution in China, which gets about 64% of its primary energy from coal.

Coal use is declining in China as policy makers encourage broader use of hydroelectric power, solar and wind. It is also pushing to restart its nuclear power programme in a bid to clear the skies. China's electricity consumption in 2014 grew at its slowest pace in 16 years, according to data from the China Electricity Council. Its CO₂ emissions fell by 2% in 2014, the first decline since 2001, signalling that efforts to control pollution are gaining traction.

India: Most cement plants in India consume less energy and emit less CO₂ than their European and American counterparts as they use the latest technology, according to the Cement Sustainability Initiative (CSI).

An initiative of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), CSI is a 23-member organisation including nine Indian cement companies. CSI members produce 66% of the world's cement and 60% in India. "The member companies from India are more efficient. They emit less CO₂ than the companies in Europe and the US. Their energy consumption is also less," said CSI's managing director Philippe Fonta.

The distinction between Indian firms from those in the US and Europe is technology. Indian companies use the latest technology since many of the cement plants are relatively new. Besides India's UltraTech Cement and Dalmia Bharat, seven global companies with operations in India like Holcim's ACC and Ambuja Cement, Lafarge, HeidelbergCement, Zuari Cement are among members of CSI. Fonta said that Indian companies could improve if they lay more emphasis on alternative fuels and energy and make use of municipal waste. The 360Mt/yr Indian cement industry meets just 0.6% of its energy needs with alternative fuels, but this is expected to go up to 5% cent by 2020.

One highlight from the cement industry news over the last month was Skyonic's announcement that it has opened a commercial-scale carbon capture unit at the Capitol Aggregates cement plant in Texas, US. Details were light, but the press release promised that the unit was expected to generate US$48m/yr in revenue for an outlay of US$125m. Potentially, the implications for the process are profound, so it is worth considering some of the issues here.

Firstly, it is unclear from the public information released whether the process will actually make a profit. The revenue figures for the Skyonic unit are predictions and are dependent on the markets that the products (sodium biocarbonate, hydrogen and chlorine) will be sold into. Skyonic CEO and founder, Joe Jones, has said in interview that the sodium-based product market by itself could only support 200 - 250 plants worldwide using this process. Worldwide there are over 2000 integrated cement plants. Since Jones is selling his technology his market prediction might well be optimistic. It is also uncertain how existing sodium biocarbonate producers will react to this new source of competition.

Secondly, Skyonic is hoping to push the cost of carbon capture down to US$20/t. Carbon dioxide (CO₂) capture and transportation varies between industries depending on the purity and concentration of the by-product. For example, in 2011 the US Energy Information Administration estimated the cost for CO₂ capture to range from US$36.10/t for coal and biomass-to-liquids conversion up to US$81.08/t for cement plants. The difference being that capturing CO₂ from cement plant flue gas emissions requires more cleaning or scrubbing of other unwanted chemicals such as mercury.

With these limitations in mind, Skyonic is placing itself in competition with the existing flue gas scrubbing market rather than the carbon capture market, since the level of CO₂ removal can be scaled to local legislation. Plus, SO_x, NO₂, mercury and other heavy metals can be removed in the process.

Back on carbon capture, Skyonic is securing finance for a process it calls Skycycle, which will produce calcium-based products from CO₂, with a pilot plant planned at Capitol Aggregates for late 2015. This puts Skyonic back amongst several other pilot projects that are running around the world.

Taiwan Cement and the Industrial Technology Research Institute inaugurated their calcium looping project pilot in mid-2013. It was last reported to have a CO₂ capture rate of 1t/hr.

The Norcem cement plant in Brevik, Norway started in early 2014 to test and compare four different types of post-combustion carbon capture technologies at its pilot unit. These are Aker Solutions Amine Technology, RTI Solid Sorbent Technology, DNV GL/ NTNU/ Yodfat Engineers Membrane Technology and Alstom Power Regenerative Calcium Cycle. The project in conjunction with HeidelbergCement and the European Cement Research Academy (ECRA) is scheduled to run until 2017.

St Marys Cement in St Marys, Canada started its bioreactor pilot project in July 2014. This process uses flue gas to grow algae that can then be used for bio-oil, food, fertiliser and sewage treatment.

If Skyonic is correct then its sodium biocarbonate process in Texas is a strong step towards cutting CO₂ emissions in the cement industry. Unfortunately, it looks like it can only be a step since the market won't support large-scale adoption of this technology. Other pilots are in progress but they are unlikely to gather momentum until legislation forces cement producers to adopt these technologies or someone devises a method that pays for the capture cost.

US: Skyonic has opened its first commercial-scale CO₂ capture and utilisation facility, at the Capitol Aggregates cement plant in San Antonio, Texas. The US$125m Capitol SkyMine will have a total CO₂ mitigation impact of 300,000t/yr, through the direct capture of 75,000t of CO₂ and transformation into sodium bicarbonate, bleach and hydrochloric acid. The unit is expected to generate around US$48m/yr in revenue and US$28m/yr in annual earnings.

"The Capitol SkyMine facility is the first step in our vision to mitigate the effects of industrial pollution and close the carbon cycle," said Joe Jones, founder and CEO of Skyonic. The SkyMine process allows up to 90% of CO₂ emissions from flue gas to be captured and transformed into solid products that can then be sold.

An update on the algae bioreactor project at Votorantim's St Marys cement plant in Canada this week provides a good opportunity to review this particular aspect of carbon sequestration. The project, run with Pond Biofuels, went live in 2009. It has now reached its third generation bioreactor at the site.

Little or no performance data has been released generally so we have no way at present of knowing how viable the process is commercially. Cement backers, Brazilian firm Votorantim, are certainly excited by the project even if only for the sustainability kudos it gives them. Director Edvaldo Araújo Rabello presented the project as one of the company's highlights at a keynote presentation at the 6°CBC Congresso do Cimento held in São Paulo, Brazil in May 2014.

One hurdle for the St Marys pilot is the relative lack of light, a required input for algae photosynthesis, even in Canada's most southerly state. Pond Biofuels have reportedly dodged this by using continuously flashing LEDs to simulate artificially short days that encourage growth. On paper or powerpoint a process that could potentially cut even a proportion of CO₂ emissions from a cement plant sounds enticing. Yet if it creates more CO₂ than it saves, through electricity requirements for example, than it isn't worth using.

This is probably what shelved Lafarge's Carbon Capture and Transformation project. It ran a pilot project at its Val d'Azergues plant in France in 2009 with Salata GmbH. The pilot worked but the researchers decided that new advances in processes and biotechnology were required to make the economic and environmental results better. Other companies have also had problems. Holcim started its Aurantia – GreenFuel project in late 2007 at its Jerez cement plant in Spain, backing it with an investment US$92m. This project stalled when GreenFuel shut in 2009 citing lack of funding as the recession hit.

ACC in India also reportedly started its own algae project in 2007, mentioning it in its sustainability report, but nothing more has been reported since. Since this burst of interest InterCement has invested US$2.5m towards algae research in 2013 working with the Federal University of São Carlos, the Federal University of Santa Maria and Algae Biotecnologia.

Algae-based carbon projects for cement plants may remain stuck in the research stage but the market for biofuels continues to grow. For example, this week we report that Ohorongo Cement in Namibia plans to increase its use of blackthorn as a biofuel to use as an alternative fuel in co-processing. The prospects of turning waste CO₂ into a valuable commodity remains uncertain, but the rewards are great. Let's wait and see what St Marys can do.