Displaying items by tag: supplementary cementitious materials

India: Bokaro Steel Plant has won granulated blast furnace slag (GBFS) supply contracts with ACC and UltraTech Cement. Under the contracts, Bokaro Steel Plant expects to supply 1.3Mt of GBFS from its facilities in Jharkhand for use in cement production in the state. The Pioneer newspaper has reported that the contracts will run until August 2026.

US: Terra CO2 has performed a successful demonstration pour of its OPUS silicate-based supplementary cementitious material (SCM) at a construction site in Texas. Terra CO2 supplied the SCM to indiGO Auto Group for the construction of its Porsche Sugar Land car dealership in Houston. It says that the product delivers durability, strength and functionality on a par with other, traditional SCMs. Tonne-for-tonne, the use of OPUS reduces projects’ CO2 emissions by 70%, and their NOx emissions by 90%, compared to ordinary Portland cement (OPC).

Terra CO2 CEO Bill Yearsley said "Our work at Terra CO2 is about forging a viable path for sustainable construction. We're set on creating a blueprint for the future where performance, cost-effectiveness and sustainability coexist seamlessly across projects. We're moving beyond the lab, beyond the processes that have held us back as an industry, and introducing a sustainable solution to real-world applications."

Austria: Christine Gröll has taken over the role of head of material flow management and process control at Alpacem Zement Austria. The producer created the new role for Gröll, who will lead a dedicated team of eight people to achieve net zero CO₂ cement production at the company’s Wietersdorf cement plant by 2035. The team will focus on alternative raw materials and alternative fuel (AF) substitution.

Gröll is an Ulm University-trained chemist with over four years’ experience working within Alpacem Zement Austria. Prior to that, she worked as a research associate for Schwenk Zement in Germany, on the development of its Celitement hydraulic binder.

Alpacem Zement Austria’s technical director Florian Salzer said "It fills us with particular pride that we were able to fill the new department with talented employees from our own company. This clearly underlines the potential that exists in our team and emphasises the extensive expertise that we have built up. We are also pleased that the department management is in the competent hands of Christine Gröll, who brings an incomparable mix of research drive and practical experience.”

Spain: Residents of Cartagena, Murcia, have protested Cemex’s plans to begin mining pozzolan at new sites locally. The Murcia Plaza newspaper has reported that the protestors are calling for a mining ban, in line with their interpretation of the area’s Rural Area of Special Environmental and Social Sensitivity designation.

Sweden: CemVision has reported the successful conclusion of a large-scale production pilot of its ultra low carbon alternative clinker. CemVision produces the clinker using up to 100% recycled industrial secondary materials from the steel and mining sectors. CemVision says that its production process heats the raw materials using renewable electricity, and without the use of fossil fuels. The alternative clinker offers CO₂ reductions of up to 100% compared with ordinary Portland cement (OPC) clinker. CemVision has opened an invitation to possible collaborators to help scale up production, with a target of hundreds of thousands of tonnes per year.

Chief technical officer Claes Kollberg said "We are a climate-first company, making high performance cement. With our competence and experience, it is our duty to produce the most environmentally friendly cement for each application."

Australia: Alternative cement and concrete producers have welcomed a new Australian civil engineering standard that allows builders to use reduced-CO₂ geopolymer concrete in infrastructure projects. Wagners, which produces Earth Friendly Concrete (EFC), said that the revision has removed on if its key barriers to wider market acceptance. EFC replaces 100% of cement with supplementary cementitious materials, including ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS) and pulverised fly ash, by virtue of its binder technology. Wagners previously supplied EFC for the London Power Tunnels project in the UK, based on local technical approval-based building codes. The producer now expects a new standard like the Australian one to follow in the EU.

Canada/UK: Carbon Upcycling has raised US$26m in a Series A funding round. The clean tech company says that the funding will support its construction of planned carbon capture systems at CRH's Mississauga cement plant in Canada and Cemex UK's Rugby cement plant in the UK. Carbon Upcycling’s technology injects captured CO₂ into industrial byproducts and minerals to produce supplementary cementitious materials. BDC Capital and Climate Investment led the funding round, with strategic investments from Cemex Ventures, CRH and Oxy Low Carbon Ventures.

Carbon Upcycling chief executive officer Apoorv Sinha said "Closing this round is a major milestone on the road to becoming the most impactful carbon tech company of this decade.” He continued “Over the next year, our mission is to demonstrate our technology's versatility, scalability and operational elegance. Significant, cost-effective decarbonisation potential in the cement industry is possible without a green premium.”

Mexico-based Cemex first invested in Carbon Upcycling via its venture capital unit Cemex Ventures in February 2022. Its said “Cemex is committed to supporting decarbonisation for the built environment, and our follow-on investment in Carbon Upcycling demonstrates such ambition. Carbon Upcycling provides a scalable solution that effectively reduces the carbon footprint of cement. Increasing the supply and use of cementitious materials aligns with Cemex’s goals of reducing CO₂ emissions and becoming fully net-zero by 2050”

The collaboration between Carbon Upcycling and Cemex dates to early 2020, and work towards a commercial-scale plant at the Rugby cement plant commenced in June 2022. The project will target a capture capacity of 1600t/yr, and has secured US$2.96m in government funding from UK Research and Innovation. Cemex says that it will subsequently roll out further CO₂ mitigation projects in partnership with Carbon Upcycling at cement plants across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Mexico and the US.

UK: A team at Imperial College London has won a US$1.27m grant for its research into developing carbon negative cement from silica. The research won the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ)’s Carbon Capture, Usage & Storage (CCUS) Innovation 2.0 competition. The Imperial team sources its silica from natural olivine. It says that the compound behaves in the same way as other supplementary cementitious materials. Meanwhile, magnesia from the decomposition of the olivine can serve as a carbon sink in the form of magnesium carbonate. It, in turn, could serve as a raw material for concrete block production.

The DESNZ’s Net Zero Innovation Portfolio, of which the CCUS Innovation 2.0 competition is a part, has a budget of US$1.29bn.

Germany: Dyckerhoff has launched Dyckerhoff Weiss Blue Star, a pozzolanic white cement CEM IV/A (P) 42.5 R product. It was approved by the German cement association, the VDZ, in mid-June 2023 and is now being manufactured at the Amöneburg plant. The lower CO₂ credentials of the new product have been promoted as it releases around 15% less CO₂ compared to CEM I cements. It is also notable for being a blended white cement.

US: Brimstone has announced a new method of ordinary Portland cement (OPC) with a negative carbon footprint. Brimstone's method uses carbon-free calcium silicate in the place of limestone. Its calcination also produces magnesium compounds, which naturally sequester further CO₂ from the atmosphere. The technology will now proceed to the testing phase at an upcoming pilot plant in Reno, Nevada, before proceeding to commercial-scale production. Brimstone will then begin to market its OPC, along with supplementary cementitious materials produced by its process.

Brimstone's chief technology officer Hugo Leandri said “By delivering the exact same cement, we clear away the main obstacles to adoption, offering an opportunity to dramatically speed up the path to net-zero construction. The same buildings, bridges and roads being built today can be built tomorrow, without carbon."