German industrial engineering firm thyssenkrupp and Swiss multinational Holcim have celebrated the groundbreaking of one of the first carbon-neutral cement plants in the world.

The ceremony took place at Holcim’s cement factory in Lägerdorf, Germany, where the company is deploying its Carbon2Business project. The project aims to capture more than 1.2 million tonnes of CO2 emissions annually. The captured CO2 will be repurposed as an industrial raw material, and from 2029 cement production at Lägerdorf will be entirely net-zero.

CO2 will be captured from the cement manufacturing process using thyssenkrupp’s Oxyfuel technology, which separates CO2 from the exhaust gases of cement factories in a kiln system, preventing it from entering the atmosphere.

For this purpose, pure oxygen is used in the combustion process instead of ambient air, allowing almost 100% of the emissions from cement clinker production to be captured.

The separated process gas is then processed into pure CO2. It can then be stored, used as a starting material in the chemical industry or as a raw material in other industries.

Vice chancellor and federal minister of economics Robert Habeck: “The cement industry is facing a particularly big challenge when it comes to decarbonisation. Here in Lägerdorf we are now showing how it can be done: to decarbonize production and boldly implement climate-neutral production of cement and concrete. The fact that carbon dioxide can not only be captured but also used as a raw material is a prime example of green transformation.”

Around 830 kilograms of CO2 is produced per tonne of cement produced. In Germany in 2019, 17% of all industrial emissions came from cement production.

Dr Cetin Nazikkol, chief strategy officer at thyssenkrupp Decarbon Technologies: “Cement is an indispensable building material. However, cement production is responsible for around seven percent of global CO2 emissions. A switch to climate-friendly processes is therefore essential. With CO2 enrichment using the pure oxyfuel technology we developed, we help our customers to almost completely capture the CO2 produced in the production process and thus reuse it sustainably.

“With global annual cement production of more than four billion tonnes, we see enormous growth potential for our innovative technology,” concludes Nazikkol.

This article was originally published on Power Engineering International