Displaying items by tag: carbon capture

Canada: Svante has raised US$75m in an investment round. The financing was led by Temasek and includes strategic investors Chart Industries, Carbon Direct and Export Development Canada (EDC). Existing investors OGCI Climate Investments, BDC Cleantech Practice, Chevron Technology Ventures, The Roda Group and Chrysalix Venture Capital also participated in the round.

The investment gives the company will allow the company to advance a number of initiatives over the next three years, including work to support several commercial scale carbon capture facilities to address hard-to-abate emissions from industrial operations such as cement manufacturing, blue hydrogen production and natural gas boilers. Svante has now attracted more than US$150m in funding since it was founded in 2007 to develop and commercialise its solid sorbent technology.

“Lowering the capital cost of the capture of the CO₂ emitted in industrial production is critical to the world’s net-zero carbon goals required to stabilize the climate. Leaders from industry, financial sectors and government agree on the enormity of the challenge and the critical need to deploy carbon capture and carbon removal solutions at Gigatons scale. The carbon pulled from earth as fossil fuel needs to go back into the earth in safe CO₂ storage,” said Claude Letourneau, President CEO of Svante.

Canada: LafargeHolcim subsidiary Lafarge Canada, Svante and France-based Total have completed Phase 2 of the CO₂MENT carbon capture and storage (CCS) project at Lafarge Canada’s Richmond cement plant. The completed phase consisted of construction and installation of the CO₂MENT technology to capture and filter the flue gas. Lafarge Canada said that Phase 3, scheduled for construction over the next three years, will include the installation of a liquefaction unit, the development of an expansion project to further reduce emissions and a business case review for further expansion across the Lafarge network

Western Canada president and chief executive officer Brad Kohl said “This has been a turbulent year for business and people due to the Covid-19 pandemic with many large scale projects being put on hold, but the perseverance that the people working at the Richmond cement plant continue to show is evident in the success of Project CO₂MENT.” He added “To continue leading change in the building materials industry means we are always looking to partner with like-minded thought leaders such as Svante and Total. This partnership is showcasing our drive towards a net-zero future, and we are seeing this vision become a reality right now with the completion of this phase.”

Japan: Sumitomo Osaka Cement has formulated a set of medium-term goals and long-term policies in order to enable it to achieve carbon neutrality, in line with the Japanese government’s target, by 2050. These consist of a 30% reduction in energy-derived carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions intensity between 2005 and 2030 and efforts toward carbon neutrality in energy and process-derived emissions by 2050. These efforts include: “reduction to the limit of fossil energy, development and introduction of process-derived CO₂ emission reduction technology, carbon-free electric power, technology development and supply expansion related to low-carbon cement and concrete products, development and supply of innovative bonding materials and development and introduction of innovative technology related to carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS).”

US: The Department of Energy has granted Cemex funding to “research and develop innovative carbon capture technology” at its Balcones, Texas cement plant. The company says that this will partly fund an 18-month feasibility study of partner company Membrane Technology & Research’s membrane carbon capture product at the plant. It says that, if successful, the study will be “an important advancement towards Cemex’s ambition to deliver net-zero carbon dioxide (CO₂) concrete globally by 2050.”

USA president Jaime Muguiro said, “At Cemex, sustainability is embedded in our operations and we are consistently looking for opportunities to reduce our carbon footprint. We strive to develop and gradually adapt new technology which will help us achieve our ambition to deliver net-zero CO₂ concrete to all of our customers. With this grant, we will be able to leverage our expertise to define the feasibility of implementing the membrane carbon capture technology in a cost-effective manner.”

Membrane Technology & Research has supplied membrane-based separation systems to the petrochemical, natural gas, and refining industries since 1992. Vice President of Technology Tim Merkel said, “Cement plant emissions are a good target for the CO2 capture membrane technology that we’ve been developing with Department of Energy support.” He added, “We look forward to working with Cemex on this exciting project to confirm that our technology can capture cement plant emissions at a minimal cost.”

Spain: LafargeHolcim España has signed an agreement with Carbon Clean, ECCO2 and gas systems specialist Sistemas de Calor for the installation of a carbon capture and storage (CCS) unit at its Carboneras integrated cement plant in Almeria. The company say that the installation will start in 2022 to capture 10% of CO₂ emissions with the eventual potential to capture 0.7Mt/yr of CO₂ and achieve 100% decarbonisation at the plant. The producer will supply the captured CO₂ to Sistemas de Calor for use in agricultural greenhouses, reducing the soil and water intensity of crop production.

Chief executive officer (CEO) Isidoro Miranda said, “Within the framework of our Ecological Transition Strategy, we are tackling climate change through innovative initiatives that allow us to develop low-carbon products and solutions. In our journey towards carbon neutrality, these types of collaborations are key. We hope that, working with our partners Carbon Clean, ECCO2 and Sistemas de Calor, we can develop this innovative circular model with the potential to revolutionise the cement sector and agriculture.”

On 20 November 2019 LafargeHolcim España committed a budget of around Euro20m to upgrades to reduce its cement plants’ CO₂ emissions by 90,000t/yr.

Italy: The pilot plant for the Cleanker project was inaugurated at Buzzi Unicem’s Vernasca cement plant in early October 2020. The purpose of the calcium looping technology project is to demonstrate a technology for capturing carbon dioxide (CO₂) in cement plants. Tests will be run for around 10 months with a total actual operating time of one month at most.

UK: UK Concrete and the Mineral Products Association (MPA) have launched a roadmap for the concrete and cement industry to become net negative by 2050. It plans to do this through decarbonised electricity and transport networks, fuel switching, greater use of low-carbon cements and concretes as well as carbon capture, use or storage (CCUS) technology.

“We have already made significant progress to reduce carbon emissions but are under no illusion about the scale of the net zero challenge,” said Nigel Jackson, chief executive of the MPA. “Achieving this will require the wholesale decarbonisation of all aspects of concrete and cement production, supply and use. The concrete and cement industry as one sector alone cannot deliver net zero and we will only be able to go beyond net zero with concerted support from government, as well as with significant changes across the wider construction, energy and transportation sectors.” He added that the roadmap could be delivered without offsetting emissions, offshoring production facilities or ‘carbon leakage.’

The ‘Roadmap to beyond net zero’ calculates the potential of each technology and the carbon savings which can be achieved. CCUS technology is vital to delivering net zero manufacturing and according to the roadmap will deliver 61% of the required carbon savings. It intends to achieve a net negative industry by 2050 by the ability of concrete to absorb carbon dioxide during use and the thermal properties of concrete in buildings and structures to reduce operational emissions.

The MPA is also lobbying the government for a financial support model including for the capital and operational costs of carbon capture by no later than 2021. This is desired to ensure the technology can be developed, deployed and become an investable proposition in the 2030s.

Mexico: Cemex has announced the signing of a collaboration agreement with Switzerland-based alternative fuel (AF) specialist Synhelion, through which the pair aim to develop the use of solar power as an alternative heat source to fuel in clinker production. Pilot testing of Synhelion products will begin at a Cemex plant in late 2022, at a total investment cost of up to US$10m.

Head of global research and development Davide Zampini said, "Thanks to the technology that Synhelion is developing, we can bring the solar heat up to 1500°C. In the process, we can also capture the carbon dioxide (CO₂), and that fits perfectly into the process of the synthetic fuel."

US: LafargeHolcim says that Department of Energy institution National Energy Technology Laboratory has awarded US$1.5m of federal funding to the company’s CO₂MENT Colorado project. The project aims to capture 2.0Mt/yr of carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the company’s 1.9Mt/yr Portland cement plant in Florence, Colorado for sequestration underground by Occidental.

The group said, “With the successful completion of the initial scoping study in June 2020 and confirmation of Department Of Energy funding, the partnership has committed to the next project phase.”

Japan: Sumitomo Osaka Cement is working on a three year CO₂ mineralisation research project from 2020 to 2022 with Yamaguchi University, Kyushu University and the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organisation (NEDO). The initiative plans to develop the technology to build a process that captures CO₂ exhaust from cement and power plants and then mineralises it with calcium-containing waste materials. It intends to use the process practically in 2030.