Carbon Capture and Storage in the Cement Industry - Phil Hodgson, Calix

As environment-friendly technology has become an inescapable subject of discussion in the cement industry, CemWeek presents an exclusive interview with Phil Hodgson, Managing Director at Calix, about carbon capture and storage (CCS) and how it can help the cement sector step up its ecologic game.

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Calix is a multi-award-winning Australian technology company that is developing new processes and materials to solve global challenges. The core technology is a world-first, patented "kiln" built in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria that produces "mineral honeycomb" ÔÇô very highly active minerals.

By using these minerals, which are safe and environmentally friendly, Calix aims at improving waste water treatment and phosphate removal, help protect sewer assets from corrosion, and help improve food production from aquaculture and agriculture with reduced anti-biotics, fungicides and pesticides.

Calix's technology has also been adopted overseas, where the company is working with some of the world's largest companies, governments and research institutions on CO2 capture.

Calix is leading the LEILAC (Low Emissions Intensity Lime And Cement) project, which includes a consortium of the world's largest cement (HeidelbergCement, Cemex, CRH/Tarmac), and lime (Lhoist) companies, as well as leading research and environmental institutions (Imperial College, ECN, Quantis, The Carbon Trust). How did this project come to be?

Calix's technology was originally developed to look at processing carbonates such as limestone and directly separate and thus efficiently capture CO2. After Calix proved the technology on a commercial scale for another carbonate mineral, magnesite, in its Bacchus Marsh plant, it reignited interest in looking at applying the technology to the cement and lime industry, which use huge amounts of limestone.

Calix started talking to big cement and lime companies and, with those that took an interest, formed a consortium to apply for funding from the European Horizon 2020 scheme, which is specifically for research and development relating to climate change strategies. The consortium, with Calix in the lead, was successful in winning funding and the project commenced in 2016. The project team included a selection of major cement and lime companies plus some research institutes and specialist engineering and technology companies.

Calix has secured Ôé¼3.4 million in working capital from EFIC, the Australian Government's export credit agency, to build a CO2 capture facility for the LEILAC project, in Belgium. What are your expectations for this initiative?

Typically with grant funding of projects such as LEILAC, there is a grant drawdown schedule that pays back eligible costs once they are incurred. That means that costs are incurred and carried by the grant recipients until their work is checked and verified by the grant administrators.  

As a small Australian company building a plant in Europe, the upfront costs were significant. While the grant would repay these costs, Calix had to come up with the money upfront to purchase equipment and employ contractors to build the plant. Reimbursement would come months or even a year or two later, which could create a large gap in the business's cash flow.

To help Calix secure its commitments under the Horizon 2020 grant, EFIC provided the working capital. The expectation is that, once construction is complete, Calix will achieve the grant drawdown, which will let it repay the EFIC loan. The consortium can then start up the plant, and hopefully prove the technology works!

One of the cornerstones of LEILAC's CO2 capture facility is Direct Separation technology. How does it work, and what are the benefits for cement manufacturers?

In a regular cement or lime kiln, there is a need to generate a very high heat, so these kilns use furnaces that burn fuel. Very hot gases are brought into contact with the feedstock, which is basically limestone. That limestone converts into lime, which is the core product in cement. In doing so, the limestone gives off a lot of CO2 ÔÇô about half the weight of limestone! This, added to the furnace gases, produces a significant amount of CO2.

The Calix technology uses an externally-heated reactor tube that is heated to around 1,000 degrees. The limestone is ground down to a small size, like the consistency of flour, and it floats down that tube and turns into lime while giving off CO2. Because the CO2 is kept in a contained space in the reactor tube, and not mixed with furnace gases, the CO2 comes off as a pure stream, which allows us to capture it directly for no energy penalty.

When it comes to the fuel being burned, there are other technologies being worked on to capture the CO2 associated with burning that fuel. But it's very important to capture the CO2 from the limestone, as roughly two-thirds of emissions from a cement plant is CO2 from the limestone.

The aim of the LEILAC project is thus to demonstrate how Calix's technology can lead to the direct separation of those CO2 emissions without additional capital or operating costs, compared to a current cement or lime plant.

Despite an increasingly environmentally aware cement industry, carbon-capture technology remains far from mainstream adoption, with some opponents deeming it unavailable, immature and/or expensive. How can CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage) overcome its reputation problem?

CCS is often talked about in relation to fossil fuels such as a coal-fired power stations. It's important to understand fossil-fuel CCS solutions in the light of the cost of alternative energy sources such as solar and wind. And, it's important to further separate fossil-fuel CCS from the CCS associated with industrial sources of CO2. One of the largest industrial sources of CO2 is the cement industry. The CO2 in that industry comes mostly from the raw limestone, which means it's an unavoidable emission, as opposed to the emissions that come from burning fossil fuels in preference to solar or wind power.

Part of the dialogue that needs to take place is to separate fossil-fuel CCS and industrial CCS and discuss each on their merits. With respect to unavoidable industrial CO2 emissions CCS has a very important role to play.

According to CW Research's 2017 World Cement Equipment Market and Forecast Report, environmental and automation are the cement equipment sub-markets most likely to increase in the next five years. Does this trend signal a new cement production approach? How?

European cement companies and, to a lesser extent, companies in other parts of the world, have started to use interesting fuel substitutions in cement production. TheyÔÇÖre moving from coal- or gas-fired kilns to biomass and recycled waste materials. This is increasingly helping to reduce the carbon footprint of the cement industry.

Perhaps within a time period of five years, with enough willpower and incentives, significant fuel substitution already achieved in Europe could be achieved in the rest of the world. This will go some way to helping the carbon footprint of the industry.

The Calix technology will require a longer horizon than five years for the cement industry. While the technology will be tested in Europe in the next few years, it will need to be scaled up and proven at scale, which is likely to take more than five years. However, the industry is certainly moving with respect to dealing with emissions, and multiple technologies, including Calix's technology, are being advanced by the industry in the hope of dealing with CO2 emissions in the future.

In February 2018, the US president Donald Trump signed the 45Q, a bill focused on expanding tax incentives for carbon-capture initiatives. Can this step somehow validate the economic viability of CCS?

When talking about the economic viability of CCS, it's important to understand when and to what extent there will be a price on carbon emissions. While there are some active carbon markets around the world, generally speaking, the cost of carbon emissions is currently fairly low. In terms of the economic viability of CCS today, it's unlikely that there would be many economically viable CCS projects. As CO2 gains a price or penalty, more CCS projects will probably become economically viable.

Considering it in the context of tax and other incentives, it's important to be aware that early stage technology is typically expensive to develop and first stage implementation is this very costly. Over time, the cost of the application of those technologies will typically decrease. However, before this can happen, those upfront incentives are necessary to help drive the innovation required in the first place.

In summary, as long as the incentives are designed to drive innovation in the short to medium term, rather than be a longer-term crutch for non-economically viable outcomes, they have a crucial role to play.

According to the 2017 update of the Global Status of the CCS report by the Global CCS Institute, in order to achieve Paris Agreement targets, more than 2,000 CCS facilities will be needed by 2040, and 14 percent of cumulative emissions reductions must be derived from CCS. Currently, there are 17 large-scale CCS facilities operating globally, with four more coming onstream in 2018. How can the cement sector play a role in pushing the numbers up?

Cement is one of the highest industrial sources of CO2, however it is dwarfed by the power and transportation sectors. Despite this, the cement industry seems to generally acknowledge it has a role to play in reducing CO2 emissions. There is enormous money going into infrastructure as the world urbanizes, and there is massive demand for new production capability. One Chinese cement company is building 100 new cement plants in three years across 50 countries. The cement industry must therefore investigate ways to reduce emissions and quickly scale the technology to utilize it across the industry.

The industry has already seen good initiatives in Europe and the cement industry is moving quickly there. In other parts of the world, movement appears slower. A lot of cement companies are global companies, so they need to continue to spearhead developing new technologies and spread their use quickly to help mitigate the industry's emissions.

This article originally appeared on CemWeek 45