Canadian carbontech company Inventys is leading a project to develop a solution to capture and reuse CO₂ from a cement plant while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Project CO₂MENT is intended to demonstrate and evaluate Inventys’ CO₂ Capture System and a selection of CO₂ utilisation technologies at
Inventys is leading the project in partnership with Lafarge Canada, a member of global building materials group
“At Inventys, we see a real opportunity to build a CO₂ marketplace where tonnes of CO₂ are traded between emitters and users,” said Inventys president & CEO Claude Letourneau. “This project provides an opportunity for global industry leaders to work together using everyone’s expertise to create new business models while fighting climate change.”
In a drive towards its 2030 sustainability goals, Lafarge recently expanded its low carbon fuel programme in Canada with the addition of a C$28m system to use non-recyclable waste as fuel. The company says the new fuel system will make Richmond the most carbon efficient cement plant in Canada. More than a million tonnes of cement are produced per year in Richmond, making it a large emitter of CO₂ in British Columbia.
“It takes intensive energy to heat limestone to the level necessary for its transformation into cement and the chemical reaction itself produces CO₂ so we are very interested in researching ways to capture these emissions and reuse them in our concrete products,” said Lafarge Western Canada CEO Brad Kohl.
“Total is delighted to invest and support the CO2MENT project that demonstrates effectiveness and robustness of technologies to capture CO2 from real industrial flue gas. This is an important step forward to make CCUS an economic solution”, says Samuel Lethier, Total CO2 Capture R&D Project Manager. “Total is committed to invest 10% of its annual R&D investment into Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage that will play an essential role in achieving carbon neutrality in the second half of the century.”
Inventys says the project provides an opportunity to evaluate the potential for a new business model for supplying post-combustion CO₂ to the existing CO₂ market as well as assessing the economic feasibility of newly developed CO₂ utilisation technologies.
“Using the CO₂ as a raw material, especially when coupled with BC’s renewable energy, could potentially generate profits to subsidise the costs of CO₂ capture and enable a use in a region where storage can’t exist,” said Inventys co-founder and VP of strategic accounts Brett Henkel. “Our objective is to see if a commercial scale project can provide a business case for up to 3,000 tons of CO2 per day, preventing those emissions from going to the atmosphere.”
Project CO₂MENT is purusuing its objectives in three phases. In Phase I (the Contaminant Programme) the aim is to educe harmful organic and inorganic substances, such as sulphur dioxide, dust and soot, as well as nitrogen oxides, from cement flue gas.
In Pase II (the CO₂ Capture Programme) the aim is to separate the CO₂ from flue gas using a customised-for-cement version of Inventys’ carbon capture technology at pilot scale.
Finally in Phase III (the CO₂ Reuse Programme) the objective is to prepare post-combustion CO₂ for reuse and support the economical assessment and demonstration of CO₂ conversion technologies onsite, such as CO₂-injected concrete and fly ash.
Funding for the first two phases is complete and development of Phase I is underway. Phase I will begin operation in 2019; followed by Phase II & III in 2020.
Inventys has received financial support for the project from CCP (CO₂ Capture Project), the Province of BC, and Canada’s federal government through the National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC IRAP).
