Companies Look to Create Less-Polluting Cement.
"Rising demand for housing in most major cities around the world is increasingly at odds with efforts to reduce greenhouse emissions, as the literal building blocks -- concrete and cement -- of the construction projects are extremely polluting.
Roughly 7% of all carbon emissions today come from cement production, making it one of the highest-emitting industrial sectors, according to consulting firm McKinsey.
"Concrete is an essential building material," said Claude Lorea, director of cement, innovation and ESG at the Global Cement and Concrete Association. "Three-quarters of the infrastructure that will exist in 2050 has yet to be built."
About 90% of the emissions in traditional portland cement come from producing clinker -- the binding agent that holds the water, gravel and sand together -- that makes up nearly three quarters of the final product. Typically, clinker is made by heating limestone and clay in a rotating kiln to temperatures above 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit. Coal is often used to power these kilns. About two thirds of the clinker emissions are released by the limestone when heated while the rest come from the combustion of fuels to create the heat.
That process has been replicated for millennia but companies now are looking to change it. One way the industry is looking to improve sustainability in cement production is by targeting efficiency gains.
British startup Carbon Re is aiming to optimize the use of fuel by employing artificial intelligence and machine learning. One of the industry's main issues is fuel wastage, according to Carbon Re co-founder Aidan O'Sullivan.
The startup is analyzing a number of producers' actual fuel usage to train its machine-learning algorithm to predict the optimal fuel needed for a given fuel source and production target. "We are looking to optimize the fuel-consumption process so you use just enough energy to get the chemical reaction you need," he said.
Others are looking to change the fuel type altogether. Cemex, one of the world's largest cement producers, has been working with Switzerland-based Synhelion to produce clinker using solar energy rather than coal.
Under the approach, mirrors concentrate sunlight into Synhelion's solar receiver which is used to heat a kiln to around 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit to create a clinker without fossil fuels. "We are eliminating combustion of fossil fuels while also having high temperature heat," said Gianluca Ambrosetti, co-chief executive and co-founder of Synhelion. The company aims to produce solar-powered clinker commercially by 2030.
Synhelion is also looking to add carbon capture to its model to absorb the CO2 released by the limestone, alongside cutting those emissions from the combustion to produce the heat.
The International Energy Agency considers carbon capture, use and storage as a means of reducing emissions for the industry, but at the moment uptake has been slow. In its Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario, the IEA says "8% of CO2 from the sector needs to be stored globally by 2030, up from negligible levels today. But progress on deployment and investment in this area is as yet limited.
Heidelberg Materials, one of the world's largest cement producers, is currently building a carbon capture and storage facility to run alongside its plant in Brevik, Norway. It aims to start capturing emissions from production by the end of next year with the capacity to absorb roughly 400,000 tons a year when fully operational. It would be the world's first large-scale carbon-capture site at a cement plant.
Another idea is doing away with traditional materials altogether, thereby avoiding the clinkering process.
Delaware-based Partanna avoids using portland cement as a binder and instead relies on natural chemistries. The company uses a combination of brine from desalination plants and waste products from steel production called slag to create a new form of cement.
Partanna says the new cement is as strong as the traditional portland form and because it uses brine as a raw material, it gets stronger if exposed to seawater." [1]
We do not know how to massively change construction so that it does not pollute the environment and destroy us. How to massively change agriculture - also not. How to massively replace sea and air transport, which is the basis of our economy - neither. How to massively change steel production and the rest of the industry - neither. It is clear that we need to rely on the skills and knowledge of those people who now know what they are doing. But with financial engineering, wars and sanctions, we are destroying the German chemical industry and China's world factory. We need to elect leaders who understand the real situation.
1. Business News: Companies Look to Create Less-Polluting Cement. Khan, Yusuf.
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 25 Aug 2023: B.6
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