This week, Heidelberg Materials announced that their carbon capture and storage (CCS) project at their Slite plant in Sweden has gone through the first phase with the project feasibility study and is ready for the next stage. This stage consists of the front-end engineering design (FEED) which will focus on developing a detailed design of the facility.
With the goal of full-scale operation set for 2030, the timeline for this project is a bit tight. Additionally, the cement company has not only set the goal of achieving net-zero emissions production with this project, but also wants to reach levels where emissions are negative. This goal would be amazing if achieved and, if it can be replicated, the result would be a truly carbon-negative cement industry in the future.
The Slite cement plant aims to increase the use of biofuels to capture up to 1.8 Mta of CO2, or 4% of the country’s total CO2 emissions, a goal that may seem unthinkable today. The process that the plant will carry out and that will allow them to achieve this, will capture 300,000t of biogenic CO2 to produce negative emissions.
In terms of measuring the biogenic CO2 capture, ENVEA, a leading company in the provision of global monitoring solutions seeking to protect the planet and people, will be supplying the measurement equipment. The company claims that biogenic CO2 can reduce the cost of carbon emission rights for cement plants, and this will help plants to benefit from emissions trading systems.
Biogenic CO2 is considered less harmful to the environment because the combustion of biomass releases only the amount of CO2 that has been fixed from the atmosphere during the growth of the biomass (plants, wood, sewage sludge or animal meal). The 14C fraction of emitted CO2 can be determined and provides an accurate measure of the proportion of biogenic CO2 in a plant’s flue gas. According to ENVEA, biogenic CO2 is classified as climate-neutral; no allowances would need to be purchased from the EU ETS or local emissions trading systems for this part of the emitted CO2.
CO2 capture analysts in Norway have conducted assessments and concluded that CO2 emissions from European cement plants contain on average between 5 and 15 percent biogenic emissions. The Slite plant is seeking to significantly increase this amount in the operation of its facilities. A total of 5.4 million tons of biogenic CO2 is currently believed to be emitted from 93 cement plants in Europe, according to data available to Norwegian analysts. The total biogenic CO2 from 21 plants analyzed in the United States was 0.8 million tons.
In the next phase, the focus of the FEED study is to design the best engineering solution to capture CO2 at Slite, and its execution is estimated to be completed by the end of 2025 with the final investment decision to be made in 2026. In 2021, Per Brevik, director of alternative fuels at Heidelberg Cement, said that there are currently many potential technology providers in this area that need to be evaluated, but they will most likely go for amine technology, given that, among the available technologies, this is the most mature and most proven.
Heidelberg Materials has an incentive to meet its 2030 target goal, given that the funds will be available at a national level. The European Commission approved a €3 billion Swedish scheme to support biogenic CO2 capture and storage in July 2024. This subsidy will be awarded through a tender process, with the first auction expected to take place this year. Participants must implement projects capable of capturing at least 50,000 t/y of biogenic CO2. Approved projects will receive 15-year contracts and a subsidy per ton of biogenic CO2 that is permanently stored.
Source: https://www.cemnet.com/