The cement planet of the carbon cycle and the storage in Padeswood, Wales
Padeswood CCS
In the meantime, carbon capture systems in the commercial area are currently being used for cement systems and the hope that one of the most difficult industrialectors for decarbonizing could finally be on their way towards net zero emissions.
The world's first carbon capture plant in a cement plant has been in operation in Norway since June. According to the owner of the facility, Heidelberg Materials in Germany, the first “zero-carbon cement” products in Great Britain and elsewhere in Europe will be delivered next month.
In the meantime, the construction of a carbon capture installation in the Padeswood cement plant in northwales begins within weeks after a subsidy contract was announced this week between the British government and Heidelberg materials. A handful of similar installations are planned in Sweden, Germany and Poland.
Developments could be a great step forward in the step of the cement industry to lower emissions that have long been seen as one of the most difficult aspects of decarbonization. “It's a good step forward,” says Paul Fennell at Imperial College London and speaks of the projects in Norway and Great Britain.
According to the Think Tank Chatham House, cement is responsible for around 8 percent of global carbon emissions. Much of this carbon dioxide is made directly by the chemical process of making clinker, the main component for Portland cement, the most frequently used type of building material. “If you want to have an ordinary Portland cement, you have this problem that you produce large amounts of CO2 from intrinsic chemistry,” says Fennell.
The record of the carbon dioxide generated from the process is widely regarded as the only scalable way to decarbonize this aspect of cement production. However, it is expensive and costs 50 to 200 euros to grasp a ton of carbon from cement production in Europe, transport and transport them permanently.
The development of the Brevik plant of Heidelberg in Norway was subsidized by his government. The carbon capture infrastructure captures 50 percent of the total emissions of the cement system. It is used with a solvent derived from ammonia with the name Amin to extract CO2 from the exhaust gases in the cement system. The captured CO2 is then released from the solvent, fluid and pumped under the Norwegian sea floor.
The Padeswood facility will use the same technology on an amino base, but will remove around 95 percent of the emissions of the system as soon as the carbon capture and storage infrastructure is in operation in 2029, says Simon Willis, CEO from Heidelberg Materials. This corresponds to around 800,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year. The Padeswood system will record more carbon than the brevik, since the latter could not maintain the additional energy supply that is necessary to operate it at 95 percent.
Construction work begins within weeks, whereby the British government has agreed to subsidize the operating costs of the technology, although details of the financing agreement have not been published. “The basic principle is that the government will give us money to help us build up and operate a carbon circuit force,” says Willis.
According to Leon Black from the University of Leeds in Great Britain, Leon Black is of crucial importance for building up the first fleet of cement facilities of carbon and storage in order to build up the first fleet of governments. “There is no way that CO2 recording and storage can be commercially profitable without government support,” he says.
However, there is hopes that the costs could fall in the future because new technologies help to make more energy -efficient. In Germany, for example, Heidelberg is part of a group of companies that test the Oxyfuel technology. This includes the return of exhaust gases back into the burner, which increases the proportion of CO2 in the exhaust gases released to around 70 percent, which makes the carbon circuit processes more efficient.
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