Displaying items by tag: Research

Pakistan: Research by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) think tank shows that the cement sector was the largest national emitter of CO₂ from coal in the financial year for 2018 – 2019. Coal was responsible for 19% of emissions in the reporting period. Cement comprised 49% of this followed by power generation at 28% and brick manufacture at 22%. The report looked at CO₂ emissions from the Pakistan energy sector. It concluded that the cement industry was often missed out in discussions about carbon emissions in the country despite its high coal consumption and the number of new plants currently being planned.

Holcim has started to unify its low carbon cement product range this week with the launch of its ECOPlanet label globally. The products are already available in Germany, Romania, Canada, Switzerland, Spain, France and Italy. The plan is to extend this to 15 countries by the end of 2021 and then to double its ‘market presence’ by the end of 2022.

The headline news is that the range will include what Holcim says is the world’s first cement product with 20% recycled construction and demolition waste. This appears to be an improvement on the group’s Susteno cement products that use fine fractions from concrete and demolition waste. This product is currently sold in Switzerland where it is advertised as saving 10% of CO₂ emissions compared to a standard cement product. Both Holcim and HeidelbergCement already sell concrete products that use the coarse waste from building demolition. Other than this, Holcim says that the range will also include cements that contain calcined clay. In June 2021 subsidiary Lafarge France announced that it would produce a cement product under the ECOPlanet banner using kaolin clay with its proprietary ProximA Tech process at its integrated La Malle cement plant in Bouc-Bel-Air.

We will have to wait and see how far Holcim goes in standardisng the range between different countries. Yet, judging from what the countries that are already selling ECOPlanet are doing, it looks like it will be a variety of blended cements. At present, for example, Holcim Germany offers four products in the ECOPlanet range. These are all slag cements, with three having effective CO₂ reductions of up to 70% and the fourth, ECOPlanet Zero, reaching 100% through a carbon offsetting scheme in conjunction with MoorFutures. Holcim Italy also launched a product in the range called ECOPlanet Prime using calcined clay in June 2021.

Incidentally, LafargeHolcim US announced a research project this week with the US Army about using demolition waste. It’s going to start working with the US Army Corps of Engineers’ Engineer Research and Development Center and Geocycle to look at how construction and demolition materials from military installations can be used for energy recovery and mineral recycling. Group resources at Geocycle’s Holly Hill Research Center in South Carolina, US and Holcim’s Global Innovation Center in Lyon, France will be used in the scheme.

Other low carbon cement products are available of course. Holcim is far from alone in launching low CO₂ cement and concrete products. Yet the use of worldwide brand names is different. Cemex is doing something similar with the global rollout of its Vertua concrete products. It first launched Vertua in France in 2018 before going global in 2020. Holcim started to launch ECOPact Concrete in 2019. Now, Holcim has gone further by doing the same thing with cement. Given how localised cement and concrete products are, it will be instructive to see how global branding for low carbon cementitious products helps these companies. For instance, who is the target audience? It could be eco-minded self-build customers or project specifiers or government departments or industry lobbyists. Or perhaps it is simply another marketing channel to reinforce the sector’s sustainable offerings.

The other point worth considering is when will the multinational cement producers start selling sustainable cements and concretes in less rich parts of the world? While Holcim was playing with blended cements and marketing this week, Dangote Cement said that it was ready to start commissioning its new 6Mt/yr integrated plant at Okpella, Edo State in Nigeria. Another 5Mt/yr plant is also on the way in the country from Madugu Cement. It has just signed a contract for China-based Sinoma International Engineering Company to build it. When Holcim and the other cement companies start selling low carbon cements in places like Nigeria then the rise of these products will be complete.

For more information on low CO₂ cement production read our feature in the February 2021 issue of Global Cement Magazine

Austria/Australia: Refractory producer RHI Magnesita and Calix say they have started a memorandum of understanding to develop a flash calciner for use in the production of refractory materials, to enable CO₂ separation for either utilisation or storage. The companies have agreed to run studies up to and including basic front-end engineering and design for a commercial-scale demonstration facility at an RHI Magnesita site.

RHI Magnesita and Calix started discussing a collaboration in early 2019. The application of Calix's technology to refractory products has been the subject of pilot scale test work during 2020, with larger scale test work currently underway.

Luis Bittencourt, chief technology officer of RHI Magnesita said, "We are pleased to be working with Calix on this project, which is a key part of the research and development programme on CO₂ emissions reduction that we are carrying out over the next five years. Together with our partners at Calix, we are seeking to develop new technologies for the capture, storage and utilisation of CO₂ that would otherwise be emitted during the refractory production process." Phil Hodgson, the managing director of Calix added that the company was also looking at strategic opportunities in its magnesium oxide businesses.

India: Researchers at the Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology in Nagpur, Maharashtra, have shown in laboratory studies that an enzyme called urease found in watermelon seeds can strengthen cementitious materials and repair cracks in concrete. The Times of India newspaper has reported that the study found around a 22% increase in compressive strength, a 19% reduction in water absorption and improvements in durability. It is hoped that the food industry waste product could potentially be used to replace chemical admixtures commonly used in concrete production. Field studies are now set to follow.

Study leader associate professor Madhuwanti Latkar said, “Watermelon seeds are magic beans when it comes to importing strength to cementitious materials.”

Germany: Two studies looking at how to prepare investments for the conversion to an oxyfuel process have been completed at Hocim’s Germany’s Lägerdorf cement plant. The projects were running with technology partners ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions and Linde. Project Oxyfuel100, part of the Westküste100 initiative, was finalised in mid-April 2021. In addition to the oxyfuel process, the technical and economic feasibility of the downstream CO₂ extraction, processing and forwarding was examined. The results of the feasibility study were reported as being “extremely positive.”

Australia: Calix has joined as a partner of the Heavy Industry Low-carbon Transition Cooperative Research Centre (HILT CRC). The initiative brings together heavy industry players, government and research and aims to boost the capability of Australian companies to remain globally competitive by capitalising on existing mineral and renewable energy resources to become international producers and exporters of low-carbon products. HILT CRC has secured US$29m from the government. This joins funding of US$158m in direct and in-kind contributions from its partners over the last decade.

“It is a chance for us to demonstrate the technology developed for CO₂ mitigation in the production of cement and lime through our European LEILAC-1 and 2 projects in an Australian setting, as well as explore other more sustainable applications for our technology in heavy industry, backed by this impressive team of researchers and industrial participants," said Calix’s managing director Phil Hodgson.

As part of the HILT CRC, Calix will continue to develop its technology for the reduction of carbon emissions from lime and cement production, and also use its Calix Flash Calciner (CFC) technology to develop other more processing applications such as for bauxite processing for the aluminium industry and production of calcined clay from kaolinite for use in new lower carbon cements.

HILT CRC’s core industrial partners include Adbri, Alcoa, Boral, Fortescue, Grange Resources, Liberty, Roy Hill and South32. The initiative has its headquarters in Adelaide and it plans to establish hubs in heavy industry regions of Gladstone, the Pilbara, Northern Tasmania, South Australia’s Upper Spencer Gulf, Western Australia's Kwinana and South West regions, the Southern Highlands of Nnew South Wales and Portland in Victoria.

UK: The UK government has announced Euro58.2m-worth of funding to support infrastructure spending, targeting innovation and technology projects. This will include a scoping study into developing a CO₂ storage testbed that will look at carbon capture and storage on an industrial scale. Other projects include a new radio telescope network, laboratories and Euro18.8m-worth of new digital research infrastructure. The government says that the new infrastructure aims to provide ‘strategic direction’ in the use of science and technology to overcome societal challenges and increase global prosperity. It said that the upgrade will secure the UK’s position as a ‘science superpower’ globally.

Switzerland/US: LafargeHolcim and GE Renewable Energy have signed a memorandum of understanding to research new ways to recycle of used wind turbines. The partners are seeking to use the shredded blades to produce low-CO₂ building materials. LafargeHolcim said that undertaking builds on the work of its subsidiary Geocycle, which previously began using GE’s waste wind turbine blades to produce alternative fuel (AF) for cement production. The cement producer called recycling the ‘key next step’ in line with the Circular Economy Action Plan of the European Union’s European Green Deal.

Czech Republic: Mexico-based Cemex plans to install a 2MW waste heat recovery (WHR) plant using supercritical CO₂ (sCO₂) at its Prachovice cement plant. The unit is intended to provide up to 8% of the plant’s electricity requirements.

The producer is part of a consortium studying new sCO₂ WHR systems. The EU Horizon 2020 Industrial Heat to Power fund awarded Euro14m in financial backing to the consortium. The project is intended to demonstrate a cheaper and more flexible method of waste heat valorisation compared to the steam or organic rankine cycle approaches conventionally used in WHR.

Plant director Karol Czubara said, “The new sCO₂ technology has a smaller footprint and higher operational flexibility than conventional power plant cycles, which produce power from turbines using water or steam.”

Sweden: Researchers at the department of architecture and civil engineering at the Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg in Västra Götaland county are developing a technology to enable concrete to store energy in the manner of a rechargeable battery. The team has proposed a design based on cement mixed with short carbon fibres. The concrete is then fitted with a metal-coated carbon fibre mesh that forms the battery’s anode and cathode. The team says that a future product based on the technology would enable solar-powered roads and buildings to store their own energy. Additionally, the introduction of sensors to the system would enable full and constant monitoring of the condition of the structure.

Chief researcher Emma Zhang said, “Results from earlier studies investigating concrete battery technology showed very low performance, so we realised we had to think out of the box, to come up with another way to produce the electrode. This particular idea that we have developed – which is also rechargeable – has never been explored before. Now we have proof of concept at lab scale.”