Displaying items by tag: Cementa

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

Sweden: HeidelbergCement says that it will establish a 1.8Mt/yr carbon capture and storage (CCS) plant at its Slite cement plant in Gotland. It aims to achieve full-scale capture of the plant’s CO₂ emissions by 2030. In conjunction with the CCS plant project, Cementa will increase the share of biomass in the Slite plant’s fuel mix.

Chair Dominik von Achten said “Just a few days ago, we published new sustainability targets, underlining the importance of carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) as one key lever to almost halve our CO₂ footprint by 2030 compared to 1990, and achieve Net Zero by 2050 at the latest.” He continued “Slite CCS is the largest CCUS project yet in our group and the cement industry, and a model for what will be achievable with CCUS also beyond 2030. As this initiative contributes considerably to the climate ambitions of Sweden, and is a unique project for us in terms of scale, we are keen to make it happen.”

Sweden: Cementa has completed its feasibility study for a carbon capture and storage (CCS) system at Slite cement plant in Gotland. The producer says that it will now proceed to the next stage of the project, with the aim of producing climate positive cement from 2030. Sister company Norcem is currently building a 400,000t/yr CCS system at its Brevik cement plant in Norway. Cementa says that its new system will have four times the capacity of that at the Brevik plant, and reduce Sweden's total CO₂ emissions by 3%. One or more of 'several storage solutions' currently under development in the North Sea will serve to store the plant's captured CO₂ emissions.

General manager Giv Brantenberg said "With the knowledge we have built up through our pioneering project at Norcem in Brevik, we now have a good picture of how to move forward in Sweden. The Nordic countries have what it takes to lead the climate transition in the construction sector."

Sweden: The government has extended Cementa’s permit to continue mining limestone at the quarries supporting its Slite cement plant for just over one year until the end of December 2022. The cement producer said that it would restart its mining activity immediately. However, it warned that the decision could still be appealed and work stopped whilst the case was pending. The subsidiary of Germany-based HeidelbergCement also refused to rule out shortages of cement in the future due to general uncertainty with the situation. Cementa has now started applying for a three to four year mining permit at the site.

Sweden: Cementa says it is preparing to ration deliveries of cement in December 2021 due to uncertainty about whether it can renew the mining licence at its integrated Slite plant in Gotland beyond the end of October 2021. The subsidiary of Germany-based HeidelbergCement has warned customers that it is preparing to implement quotas of cement products from its two plants and five terminals on a week-by-week basis. The quotas will be based on what level of cement customers have ordered previously over the past 36 months. It will also take into account whether there have been significant volume changes during the period.

Cementa says it submitted its application for an emergency permit in late September 2021. It needs approval from the government by mid-November 2021 to avoid a potential cement shortage. However, any such approval may be subject to an appeal leading to further delays in mining.

Sweden: Cementa has announced that its Stockholm cement terminal will no longer receive deliveries of its Slite brand cement and will instead begin solely stocking the company’s fly ash cement from 1 December 2021. The producer says that the transition will reduce the carbon footprint of the terminal’s products by 30,000t/yr. Slite cement will continue to be available from the nearby Köping and Oxelösund cement terminals.

It’s been a good week for carbon capture in cement production with new projects announced in France and Poland.

The first one is a carbon capture and utilisation (CCU) collaboration between Vicat and Hynamics, a subsidiary of energy-provider Groupe EDF. The Hynovi project will see an integrated unit for capturing CO₂ and producing methanol installed at Vicat’s Montalieu-Vercieu cement plant in 2025. It aims to capture 40% of the CO₂ from the kiln exhaust stack at the plant by using an oxy-fuel method and installing a 330MW electrolyser to split water into oxygen and hydrogen for different parts of the process. The CO₂ will then be combined with hydrogen to produce methanol with potential markets in transport, chemicals and construction. The setup is planning to manufacture over 0.2Mt/yr of methanol or about a quarter of France’s national requirement. The project was put forward under a call for proposals by the Important Projects of Common European Interest (IPCEI) program. Pre-notification of its participation in the program has been received from the French government and it is currently being evaluated by the European Commission. Vicat’s decision to choose its Montalieu-Vercieu plant for this project is also interesting since it started using a CO₂ntainer system supplied by UK-based Carbon8 Systems there on an industrial scale in November 2020. This system uses captured CO₂ from the plant’s flue gas emissions to carbonate cement-plant dust and produce aggregate.

The second new project is a pilot carbon capture and storage (CCS) pilot by HeidelbergCement at its Górażdże cement plant in Poland. This project is part of the wider Project ACCSESS, a consortium led by Sintef Energi in Norway that aims to cut carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) costs and to link CO₂-emitters from mainland Europe to storage fields in the North Sea. The cement plant part in Poland will test an enzyme-based capture method using waste heat at the plant. Another part of the project will look at how the captured CO₂ can then be transported to the Northern Lights storage facility in Norway including the regulatory aspects of cross-border CO₂ transport. ACCSESS started in May 2021 and is scheduled to end in April 2025. It has a budget of around Euro18m with Euro15m contributed by the European Union (EU) Horizon 2020 fund.

HeidelbergCement also says that the second stage of its LEILAC (Low Emissions Intensity Lime And Cement) project at the Hannover cement plant is part of ACCSESS, with both testing of the larger-scale Calix technology to capture CO₂ and the connected transport logistics and bureaucracy to actually get it to below the North Sea. That last point about Calix is timely given that US-based Carbon Direct purchased a 7% stake in Calix in mid-September 2021 for around US$18m. Whilst on the topic of carbon capture and HeidelbergCement don’t forget that the group’s first full-scale carbon capture unit at Norcem’s Brevik cement plant, using Aker Solution’s amine solvent capture technology, is scheduled for commissioning in September 2024. Another carbon capture unit is planned for Cementa’s Slite plant in 2030 but the proposed capture method has not been announced.

Other recent developments in carbon capture at cement plants include Aalborg Portland Cement’s plan to capture and store CO₂ as part of the Project Greensand consortium. The overall plan here is to explore the technical and commercial feasibility of sequestering CO₂ in depleted oil and gas reservoirs in the Danish North Sea, starting with the Nini West Field. The project is still securing funding though, with an Energy Technology Development and Demonstration Program application to the Danish government pending. However, the Danish Parliament decided in December 2021 to set aside a special funding pool to support a CO₂ storage pilot project so this initiative seems to be making progress. If the application is successful, the consortium wants to start work by the end 2021 and then proceed with an offshore injection pilot from late 2022. How and when Aalborg Portland Cement fits in is mostly unknown but a 0.45Mt/yr capture unit at its Rørdal cement plant is tentatively planned for 2027. There’s also no information on the capture method although Aker Carbon Capture is also part of the Project Greensand consortium. Finally, also in September 2021, Chart Industries subsidiary Sustainable Energy Solutions announced that it had selected FLSmidth to help adapt and commercialise its Cryogenic Carbon Capture carbon capture and storage (CCS) system for the global cement industry.

All of this tells the cynics in the audience that a large international climate change meeting is coming up very soon. Most cement companies will likely want some good news to show off when the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) dominates the media agenda in November 2021. Other observations to point out include that none of the projects above are full-scale industrial carbon capture installations, most of them are consortiums of one sort of another and that they are all subsidised or want to be. While hydrogen and CO₂ networks get built this seems inevitable. Yet, we’re not at the stage where cement companies just order carbon capture units from a supplier, like they might a new clinker cooler or silo, without the need for long lists of partners. When this changes then carbon capture looks set to flourish.

On a final note, the UK is currently experiencing a shortage of commercially-used CO₂. The reasons for this have nothing to do with the cement industry. Yet consider the constant doom-and-gloom about record global CO₂ emissions and the sheer amount of effort going into reducing this by the projects mentioned above and others. Life has a sense of humour at times.

For a view on the CO₂ sequestration permitting process in the US look out for the an article by Ralph E Davis Associates, in the forthcoming October 2021 issue of Global Cement Magazine

Sweden: Cementa plans to restrict its exports to the Baltic countries and Denmark. Finwire News has reported that the subsidiary of Germany-based HeidelbergCement is enacting the measure in order to focus its cement supply on its Swedish customers.

Cementa’s prospects for continued mining limestone in Sweden beyond the end of October 2021 have been looking dubious recently. The subsidiary of Germany-based HeidelbergCement wants to carry on mining limestone at its quarries near its integrated Slite plant in Gotland after 31 October 2021 when its current permits expire. However, the Supreme Land and Environmental Court rejected its renewal application in July 2021 on the grounds that the impact of the quarries on groundwater had not been sufficiently investigated. Then the Supreme Court ruled that it had no basis for appeal at the end of August 2021. This leaves the cement producer hanging on for proposed government plans to make legislative changes to keep limestone mining ongoing for another eight months until mid-2022 and then for whatever scheme the legislators cook up next.

In July 2021 construction multinational Skanska publicly said that it was taking the situation ‘seriously’ because its concrete suppliers had warned it of the impending risk that they would potentially be unable to meet demand in the third quarter of 2022. At the same time the Swedish Construction Federation and related bodies noted that up to 175,000 jobs in construction could be adversely affected with a loss of investment of nearly Euro2bn/month due to the predicted cement shortage. In their view, increasing imports in the short term was unrealistic due to capacity constraints at ports and import terminals. Understandably, the Swedish government has been scrambling to keep the quarries open to protect cement supply and has been accused by both the local press and environmental bodies of circumventing legal norms in the process.

This is not a good situation to be in for either Cementa or anyone who might want to use cement locally in the near future. The cement producer operates both of Sweden’s integrated plants, at Slite and Skövde respectively, with Slite holding around 80% of the company’s production capacity. On its own, the Slite plant alone supplies 75% of the country’s cement, with about another 10 – 15% provided by importer Schwenk Zement. As a whole Cembureau data shows that the country’s market was just under 3Mt/yr in 2020 and stable despite the coronavirus pandemic. A small decline in the residential segment was reported, coupled with a ‘flat’ infrastructure segment, although increased demand from wind farm construction was noted. Cementa stopped production at a third local integrated plant, Degerhamn, in mid-2019 due to low profitability at the site and tightening environmental regulations.

Cementa and HeidelbergCement are putting up a fight by publishing lots of information on Cementa’s website about the permit application process and working towards both solutions in the short and longer term. In early September 2021 Nordkalk signed a deal with Cementa to supply it with limestone. However, as Thomas Lind, the head of cement for HeidelbergCement Northern Europe, pointed out in August 2021, the agreement won’t cover the entire shortfall, nor would it be ideal from logistical or environmental angles. On the opposing side, the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation has joined with the Supreme Land and Environmental Court in opposing the quarry permit renewal along with other environmental groups. Plus the government decision to force through a permit reprieve has also given ammunition to its political rivals.

The argument over Slite’s quarry sums up some of the challenges facing society over continued cement production in a world with ever-tougher environmental legislation. Cement plants are likely to face mounting opposition on environmental grounds but most governments will panic when facing the potential consequences of societies running out of essential building materials. There are many ways to avoid this scenario, such as far greater community and political involvement on the part of cement companies, recognition by governments of the importance of building materials, supporting the development and uptake of concrete made with less Ordinary Portland Cement or switching to higher ratios of other building materials and so on. Yet, without preparation, legislators elsewhere will also find themselves in similar positions to the one the Swedish government is in now.

Slite’s problems have arisen in part over a perceived direct threat to local drinking water, although Cementa says that this is absolutely not the case. Typically, cement plants in similar battles find themselves in opposition to local communities due to the immediate impacts of quarrying or production on water, or due to noise or dust. Yet the hidden consequence of clinker production is significant process CO₂ emissions with resulting global climate change. The particular tragedy in Gotland is that HeidelbergCement is one of the more sustainable-minded cement companies, with investment to match. In June 2021 it announced ambitions to upgrade the Slite plant to become the world’s first carbon-neutral cement plant through bio-based fuel substitution and a carbon capture and storage unit by 2030. This may be eight years away but it is one of very few full scale cement plant carbon capture upgrades that have been promised worldwide.

Sweden: Cementa has said that it ‘views positively’ the Swedish government's rapid action in proposing a new bill on limestone mining licencing. It lobbied the government to stick to its schedule to have a temporary licence in place for Cementa’s use of its quarries in Gotland by 31 October 2021. The group said that it is working ‘with full force’ to find practical and legal solutions to secure the Swedish cement supply in the short and long term.

Sustainability manager Karin Comstedt-Webb said “It will be important that the time frames are not limited by the new bill, but that it enables flexibility to secure Swedish cement supply in the future, so that we avoid ending up in the same problematic situation again in just a number of months.” She added “I want to emphasise that Cementa in all situations works with high environmental requirements. Our ambition remains to be able to show that our industrial operations and the production of the building material cement can go hand in hand with protection of Gotland's nature, water and people.”