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New Energy World™
New Energy World™ embraces the whole energy industry as it connects and converges to address the decarbonisation challenge. It covers progress being made across the industry, from the dynamics under way to reduce emissions in oil and gas, through improvements to the efficiency of energy conversion and use, to cutting-edge initiatives in renewable and low-carbon technologies.
Solid, gas and liquid: how carbon capture in cement production is becoming a concrete idea
2/9/2025
8 min read
Feature
A Norwegian cement plant has become the first to implement full-scale carbon capture, but developers of an alternative process aim to demonstrate a better way of removing carbon from the solid powder production line from emitted flue gas – with the possibility of later liquefaction, reports Will Dalrymple, Senior Editor, New Energy World.
The demonstration carbon capture and storage (CCS) plant at Heidelberg Materials’ Brevik, Norway, cement plant is now being commissioned following an official opening in June. At full-scale production of 400,000 t/y (or 55 t/h) of liquefied CO2, it will be the first full-scale facility in a cement plant, according to the developers. The CO2 harvested in Brevik is taken by ship for final disposal under the North Sea, as part of the Norwegian government’s Northern Lights CCS project. This site is the furthest developed of the project’s three signed CO2 sources, which include a Hafsund Celsio waste-to-energy plant in Oslo and, in a second phase, Ørsted and Yara facilities elsewhere.
At Brevik, two kiln strings produce about 135t/h of intermediate product ‘clinker’, which makes Portland cement with the addition of a small quantity (5%) of gypsum. Portland cement makes concrete, when combined with water, sand and aggregates. The core of the process involves pre-heating ground limestone and mixing it, with further heat, in a rotary kiln at 1,400°C, with sand, gypsum and slag. The so-called precalcination and calcination stages are the most energy-intensive and carbon-heavy phases of production.
To generate the intense heat required to calcine the cement, the plant itself burns a mixture of coal (about 20%) and alternative fuels, including bone meal, waste oil, waste anode dust, refuse-derived fuel and diesel for start-ups. ‘Whatever we can get, we burn it,’ quips Anders Skærlund Petersen, Senior Project Manager, Heidelberg Materials Decarbonisation and Process Innovation.