Cement Energy Environment

55 commitment to further reduce the carbon footprint of its products. UltraTech will work with GCCA and its members across the built environment value chain to deliver this aspiration in a circular economy, whole life context. UltraTech has adopted new age tools like Science Based Target Initiative (SBTi), Internal Carbon Price and Energy Productivity (#EP100) as part of its efforts to accelerate adoption of low carbon technologies and processes across its value chain and thus reduce carbon footprint over the life cycle. The Company has successfully substituted a part of clinker in cement manufacture with fly ash, GGBS and other cementitious material to increase the use of industrial waste. The Company has ambitious plans to increase share of blended cement as well increasing share of alternate fuels and raw material, waste heat recovery systems, and renewable energy. UltraTech is continuously endeavouring to make its products more environment friendly. Currently, 73 UltraTech products have received GreenPro Certification. Lafarge Holcim is currently spearheading over twenty CCU/S projects in the US, Canada and Europe, placing the company at the forefront of low-carbon construction. Out of 20+ projects ongoing whereof 5 are already public, involving CCUS like CO2MENT at the Portland and Richmond plants, Westküste 100 in Germany, C2PAT in Austria as well as a project with Carbon Clean in Spain. ACC has committed to reducing scope 1 GHG emissions/t of cementitious material by 21.3 per cent and scope 2 GHG emissions/t by 48.4 per cent by 2030, compared with a 2018 base year. With these targets, ACC commits to reduce its CO 2 intensity in cement operations from 511kg in 2018 to 409 kg of CO 2 /t of cementitious material by 2030. In the field of pre combustion capture and Oxy-fuel combustion, a revolutionary development has taken place which is on testing platform. CALIX Australia entered into the market two years ago with a reactor used to directly capture the CO 2 produced from Magnesium minerals. Now the same technology is to be used to capture the CO 2 produced by the cement manufacturing process, two third of which comes as emission from burning (calcination) of limestone. The CALIX reactor is capable of capturing almost pure CO 2 released from limestone. The system is unique in that the heat of exhaust gases is transferred to the limestone via a special steel vessel. In this way the reactor is heated indirectly with the gases never coming into contact with the limestone. The CO 2 therefore is separated in an almost pure form. This technology offers an added benefit, as it can capture these emissions without significant energy or capital expenditure. In addition to this technology European Cement Academy (ECRA) is also engaged in developing an oxy-fuel kiln, which recirculates exhaust gases to the burner while pure oxygen is added to keep combustion effective. As a result percentage of CO 2 in the exhaust gases rises to 70% or higher.Oxy-fuel can also be used in combination with the CALIX technology. Should this prove successful, it will enable 100% of all CO 2 produced from Cement Plant to be effectively captured. Low Emissions Intensity Lime And Cement (LEILAC) consortium has successfully demonstrated CO 2 separation with more than 95% purity at its pilot unit at Heidelberg Cement’s cement plant in Lixhe where preliminary test runs have been completed on the pilot scale, however an economic feasible solution with commercial operation is yet to be established, nevertheless this provides a hope to move forward in this direction to work by technology providers. The project is taking place under the auspices of LEILAC. The research consortium includes Heidelberg Cement, Australian Technology Company CALIX and other cement & lime producers, as well as research and development institutions. Some other global efforts include •The CLEANKER project, which is developing pre- commercial demonstration of a calcium looping carbon capture process at a cement plant in Vernasca, Italy. Capturing CO 2 from portion of flue gas. •A joint research initiative by four European cement producers, formed in late 2019, which plans to build a semi-industrial oxy fuel test facility in Germany. •Canada’s CO 2 abatement project, which in 2019 launched trials of a novel physical adsorption technology at a Lafarge Holcim cement plant. In early 2020, several companies initiated a joint study to assess the feasibility of a commercial facility using the same technology in the United States. •Direct separation, which captures process CO 2 emissions by applying indirect heating in the Calciner. It was successfully piloted by the LEILAC project at a cement plant in Belgium in 2019 and large scale demonstration is envisioned by 2025.