
Displaying items by tag: Norcem
Demolition starts of Akranes cement plant
13 December 2017Iceland: Iceland Cement has started demolishing its cement plant at Akranes. The 9 hectare site in the town will be used for housing and other projects, according to the Iceland Review magazine. FLSmidth originally built the plant and it was in operation since 1958 before it stopping manufacturing cement in 2012 when the company switched to imports from Norcem. Germany’s HeidelbergCement is the majority owner of the company.
Norway: Norcem, part of HeidelbergCement Group, has awarded a contract for a concept study of carbon capture at its Brevik cement plant to Aker Solutions. It previously carried out testing with a pilot capture plant at Brevik. Norcem subsequently selected Aker Solutions' technology to be used for a potential facility at the cement plant. The oil and gas engineering company has also won a carbon capture contract from Yara to run a study at its Herøya ammonia plant.
"Aker Solutions can now offer carbon capture plants at lower costs and with less energy demand using a new non-corrosive and environmentally-friendly solvent that has very low degradation," said Oscar Graff, head of carbon capture and storage (CCS) at Aker Solutions. "The solvent is very robust and can be used for various types of flue gases and gives minimum emissions and waste products."
The study for Norcem will design a carbon capture plant that's integrated with the cement factory, including a process to turn the CO2 into liquid and storage facilities that can be used before shipping. The plant will have a capacity of about 400,000t/yr of CO2. The Yara study will design and develop a capture plant for the reformer flue gas and will also include liquefaction. Both concept studies are set to be completed in September 2017.
In April 2017 Gassnova, a state-run company for carbon capture and storage, announced the start of the concept studies as part of a goal to establish a complete CCS chain, including capture, transport and permanent storage, by 2022. The concept phase will also seek to establish more accurate cost estimates. The next phase in the process will involve front-end engineering design (FEED) work until around mid-2018 before an investment decision is made by the Norwegian government in the first half of 2019.
Aker Solutions has developed and qualified an improved carbon capture technology since 2008, investing in research and development, testing and operations. The company has gathered experience through design, construction and two years of operations of an amine plant at Technology Centre Mongstad and carried out tests in the US, the UK and Norway using its mobile carbon capture pilot plant.
Norway: The Ministry of oil and energy of Norway has announced that it expects to complete every step in the development of carbon capture and storage (CCS), i.e. capturing CO2 emissions from an industrial plant, transporting it by ship and injecting it into a depleted oil and gas reservoir in the North Sea, by 2022. Investment would range between Euro460m and Euro815m.
The source of the CO2 could be one or more of three companies currently developing CO2 capture technology. These are the HeidelbergCement-owned Norcem Brevik plant near Oslo, fertiliser maker Yara International and a waste incinerator operated by the Oslo city council.
Planning and investment for the whole chain could reach Euro0.77-1.35bn, with a 40% cost uncertainty. The government plans to present further CCS plans in the state budget in October 2016.
Norcem signs record contract for 280,000t of cement
08 April 2016Norway: Norcem, the Norwegian subsidiary of HeidelbergCement, and Acciona Ghella JV have signed an agreement for the cement supplies to the Follo Line Project in Oslo. The supply of 280,000t of cement over a three-year period is Norcem’s largest contract ever.
“This is a milestone for HeidelbergCement in Norway and will put great demands on both production and logistics,” said Bernd Scheifele, chairman of the managing board of HeidelbergCement. “Our subsidiary Norcem made the best offer and it has the necessary production capacities and logistics to supply the required volumes to this outstanding project in Norway.” The cement supplies will start in mid to late April 2016.
The Follo Line Project is currently the largest transport project in Norway and includes the country’s longest double track railway tunnel at 20 km. The new railway track runs between Oslo Central Station and the new station in the municipality of Ski in the Follo district, south of Oslo. It will enable a 50% reduction in journey time between Oslo and Ski.The project is scheduled to be finalised at the end of 2021.
Capturing the cement carbon capture market
12 November 2014One 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, SOx, 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.
Norway: Oil and gas industry engineering firm Aker Solutions has won a contract to test and study the capture of CO2 from flue gas emitted at Norcem's cement plant in Brevik, Norway. The award from the HeidelbergCement subsidiary, in cooperation with the European Cement Research Academy (ECRA) marks the first time technology to capture CO2 will be used at a cement production plant.
Aker Solutions will perform long-term testing on the actual flue gas to select optimum chemical solvent for high content CO2 flue gas at the plant. Tests will be performed with Aker Solutions' in-house developed Mobile Test Unit (MTU). The MTU is a CO2 capture plant that includes all processes and functions found in a large scale commercial plant.
ECRA members chose Norcem Brevik as the site for ECRA operational CO2-capture test project. The project is supported and partly financed by the CLIMIT programme, which is managed by Gassnova in cooperation with the Research Council of Norway.
Aker Solutions has developed CO2-technology solutions since the early 1990s. A separate company, Aker Clean Carbon, was established in 2007 as a company under Aker ASA to commercialise carbon capture technology. Aker Solutions took full ownership of Aker Clean Carbon in 2012 and carbon capture and storage activities are an integrated part of Aker Solutions.