Displaying items by tag: Massachusetts

US: Sublime Systems has completed negotiations with the US Department of Energy for a US$87m grant to build a ‘clean’ cement manufacturing plant in Holyoke, Massachusetts. The company will now commence site engineering, design and permitting. The Holyoke plant will demonstrate full-scale operations of its cement manufacturing process when production begins in 2026. Sublime Systems expects to create 70 - 90 jobs once its new plant is operational.

US: Sublime Systems has announced the first-ever commercial application of its low-carbon Sublime Cement product at WS Development’s One Boston Wharf building in Massachusetts. The concrete placement is located in the Paseo indoor public space at the office building. The floor will be marked with educational materials explaining the significance of decarbonised cement in combating global climate change.

Leah Ellis, the CEO and Co-Founder of Sublime Systems, said “Buildings are monuments to the values of the people who build them, and the One Boston Wharf project represents WS Development’s leadership in ushering in our post-carbon future.” She continued “They are creating not only the building but the world where people want to be. We are honoured to have Sublime Cement featured so prominently here and are confident this pioneering place will inspire infrastructure owners everywhere to embrace low-embodied-carbon materials as a powerful tool for achieving our global net-zero goals.”

US: Holcim US has entered a partnership with climate tech start-up incubator Greentown Labs to accelerate decarbonisation in the built environment, using the latter’s Somerville, Massachusetts, and Houston, Texas, incubators. Holcim said that the collaboration will increase its access to start-ups in the field of sustainable building solutions. The producer has additionally joined Greentown Labs’ Industry Leadership Council for strategic guidance. Greentown Labs supports over 200 start-ups and has assisted more than 525 since its inception. It offers lab space, office space, machine shops, electronics labs, tool shops, software, business resources and a network of stakeholders to climate tech start-ups.

Holcim chief sustainability officer Nollaig Forrest said “With our open innovation ecosystem, we partner with hundreds of start-ups worldwide to accelerate the shift to sustainable building. By partnering with Greentown Labs, we aim to empower the best and brightest start-ups active in the built environment to scale up their impact. The combination of Holcim MAQER Ventures, our venture capital programme, with Greentown’s stellar roster of successful climate tech start-ups will serve as a catalyst to reinvent how the world builds for a regenerative future.”

Greentown Labs CEO Kevin Knobloch said "Greentown Labs is thrilled to be partnering with Holcim, a global leader in sustainable building solutions to decarbonise the built environment to bolster cutting-edge climate tech innovations in this critical sector. We look forward to seeing Holcim engage with our building tech start-ups, sharing its unmatched expertise in low-carbon building innovations and helping advance our entrepreneurs' solutions."

US: Sublime Systems has acquired a site in Holyoke, Massachusetts, to build its first commercial-scale cement plant. The planned unit is expected to be commissioned in 2026, create 70 jobs, and will eventually have a capacity of 30,000t/yr. The selected site previously housed paper mills and is powered by local hydroelectric resources. The project is also being supported by a state tax credit from the Economic Development Incentive Program and local Tax Increment Financing from the City of Holyoke to offset property taxes. The commercial-scale plant is being developed as a stepping-stone before building a larger 1Mt/yr plant in the future.

Sublime Systems chief executive officer and co-founder Leah Ellis said “The same qualities that made Holyoke a world-class industrial hub in the past perfectly position it to now be the home for clean tech manufacturing of the future.” She continued, “The Water Street site exemplifies that in its ample space, industrial zoning, access to renewable hydroelectricity, utilities and even rail.”

Sublime Systems is commercialising an electrolysis cement production process that will manufacture cement at ambient temperature from a variety of calcium sources. Its Sublime Cement product received an ASTM C1157 designation in September 2023. The company has raised over US$50m from a consortium of climate technology investors, Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) funding and strategic investor Siam Cement Group.

US: Holcim US has rebranded its businesses in Boston, Massachusetts, to unite them under the Holcim name. Resources News has reported that Lafarge Cement, which operates the Charlestown cement terminal, as well as building materials producer Aggregate Industries, will rebrand as Holcim US.

Holcim US’ Northeast and Great Lakes regional senior vice president and general manager Domenico D'Aqui said "With the integration of local legacy operations into Holcim, the Boston area will see expanded benefits of construction projects made from innovative materials, such as ECOPact reduced-CO₂ concrete, that not only build needed infrastructure but also meet ambitious sustainability targets."

US: A team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have demonstrated an electrochemical process to make clinker in a laboratory. A paper on the work by Yet-Ming Chiang, the Kyocera Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT, with postdoctoral researcher Leah Ellis, graduate student Andres Badel and others has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS).

In the new process, pulverised limestone is dissolved in acid at one electrode in an electrolyser and carbon dioxide (CO₂) is released in a pure, concentrated stream. Lime is precipitated out as a solid at the other electrode. The lime can then be processed in another step to produce clinker.

Benefits of the new process include potentially substituting fossil fuels with electricity supplied from renewable sources and the production of a pure source of CO₂ that could be captured with less or no scrubbing compared to conventional clinker production.

US: Charah Solutions has opened a terminal for fly ash in Hopedale, Massachusetts. The unit has railway access and is connected to local road networks. It is intended to serve customers in New England.

Charah Solutions says that the terminal will increase the availability of fly ash from its MultiSource materials network locations in the South, New England, the Midwest, the Rocky Mountains and California. These locations supply Class C and Class F fly ash for ready mix concrete producers and other customers.