World's First 'Zero-Carbon' Cement Plant Project Advances in Sweden

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Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--Cementa AB and utility group Vattenfall AB (Stockholm, Sweden) have advanced the first project globally to electrify the production of cement.

Results from the pilot study of the CemZero project at Cementa's factory in Slite on the island of Gotland in Sweden show that the "technical prerequisites exist for electrified cement production". The objective for CemZero is electrified cement production supplied with electricity from a fossil-free Swedish energy system--in this case wind energy located on Gotland, Sweden's largest island. The Cementa plant consumes almost half of the power on Gotland, currently supplied by fossil-fuel sources. The findings from the report have been submitted to the Swedish Energy Agency, which co-financed the study. Cementa, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Germany's HeidelbergCement AG, has committed to zero CO2 emissions from cement production by 2030. If the project succeeds it will reduce Sweden's CO2 emissions by 5%. It will be watched closely by the world's cement industry which has committed to reducing its high level of emissions.

Worldwide, the cement industry accounts for approximately 8% of global emissions. The cement and concrete sector play an important role in the European economy--which accounts for 5% of global demand--and the sector has committed to reaching the goals of the Paris Agreement which commits governments to keep global warming well below 2° Celsius and to pursue efforts to keep it below 1.5°C. Less than 40% of emissions come from the energy used to produce cement, with 60% of emissions coming from the chemical breakdown of limestone into the key cement component--the "clinker"--which reacts with water.

"Achieving radical emissions reductions requires advances in technology. CemZero opens up an interesting path which we are looking forward to taking further," said Cementa's Chief Executive Officer Magnus Ohlsson.

"It is very positive that we can proceed with the work of electrifying the cement industry, it is one of the most important examples of new collaborations for technology development which can make a substantial contribution to the efforts to create a fossil-free future", added Magnus Hall, chief executive officer of Vattenfall. The CemZero study found that:

• Electrification of the heating in the cement process appears to be technically possible. Among other things it has been shown to produce a certain amount of cement clinker based entirely on plasma technology. This possibility needs to be verified through large-scale testing.
• An electrified solution for cement is competitive compared with other alternatives in order to achieve radical reductions in emissions. The study demonstrates an approximate doubling of the production cost for the cement, but ultimately only entails a cost increase of a couple of percent of the finished building or infrastructure.
• Simulations have indicated that any future electrification of Cementa's factory on Gotland would work well together with planned expansion of wind energy on Gotland, partly through an improved energy balance, but also through reduction of the maximum surplus capacity to which wind energy would otherwise give rise.

Industrial Info is also tracking a ground-breaking full-chain carbon capture and storage (CCS) project at a cement plant in Brevik, Norway. Developed by Norcem, a subsidiary of HeidelbergCement AG (Heidelberg, Germany), the government has agreed to fund front-end engineering and design (FEED) studies. For additional information, see May 29, 2018, article - Norway Backs Full-Scale Carbon Capture Project.

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