A European Commission grant program has provided the LEILAC consortium with a five-year, 12 million-euros grant for development and demonstration of a new carbon capture technology.
The consortium – the acronym stands for Low Emissions Intensity Lime And Cement — is led by technology company Calix and includes Heidelberg Cement, Amec Foster Wheeler, Imperial College, and other entities.
The cement industry emits as much as 5 percent of worldwide carbon dioxide emissions, “while the lime sector has the highest CO2 intensity relative to turnover,” according to an April 21 press release.
“For years, both the cement and lime industries have made continuous efforts to improve their environmental performance and have successfully reduced CO2 emissions from the production process,” the release states. “As around 60 percent of CO2 emissions are released directly and unavoidably from the processing of the raw materials, cost effective carbon capture technologies are needed on a large scale, to help reach the EU’s 80 percent emissions reductions target by 2050.”
Calix’s Direct Separation system could be one such tool, according to the consortium. Roughly 66 percent of CO2 emissions from lime and cement production is the byproduct of lime and carbon dioxide breaking down in furnaces. The Calix system changes the process flows so that nearly pure CO2 from the limestone can be captured with little if any extra expense or added environmental affect, according to the group.
Design of the consortium’s direct separation calciner demonstration plant is expected to take three years, with construction planned at the Heidelberg Cement facility in Lixhe, Belgium. That would be followed by two years of testing.
