Friday, February 28, 2020

We can deal with cement


The cement sector is a *really* significant contributor to global CO₂ emissions, about 3 times as polluting as aviation, and growing fast as the trend towards urbanisation and higher standards of living continue.


Around 2/3rds of the CO₂ emissions from making cement come from the processing of limestone (calcination).


@Calixlimited  has developed a calcination process that captures >95% of the CO₂ emissions released by limestone in the production process.




The CO₂ would then be used in downstream industrial process, or stored safely in deep geological features.

@ProjectLEILAC  has a credible pathway to matching the capital & operating costs of traditional cement processes — ie. it'll be competitive with traditional processes.

The majority of the remaining process emissions come from heating — here they're using gas.

In the next iteration, @Calixlimited  will test electrical heating (at 1000°C!) which can feasibly be provided by renewables.

(Yes, the process can be varied to respond to availability.)

The demonstration unit has a capacity ~5% of an average cement plant.  The next version will be a module capable of 20% of a typical plant's throughput, ie. a full-scale cement plant would comprise 5 such modules.

It’s been generally assumed that the cement industry will be very difficult to decarbonise.

Until now…

The project's backers plan to be supplying commercial, full-scale systems to decarbonise cement manufacture from the mid 2020s.





No comments:

Post a Comment