Switzerland – Cemex and Synhelion have reached a significant milestone in their collaborative endeavor to establish entirely solar-powered cement production: the scaling of their technology to industrially viable levels. This includes the continual use of solar heat to produce clinker, the process that consumes the most energy during the manufacture of cement.
In a rotating kiln, clinker is made at temperatures that are very close to 1,500 °C. The majority of direct CO2 emissions come from fossil fuels, which are also used to heat kilns. The ground-breaking technology from Synhelion generates enough heat to create clinker without the use of fossil fuels. In Cemex’s ambitions to become carbon neutral by 2050, replacing all fossil fuels with solar energy would be a game-changer. The method also produces the conditions necessary to concentrate the remaining CO2 from calcination, which may then be captured without additional work.
Funding
Recently, Cemex and Synhelion’s collaboration has earned significant notice. A joint venture between Cemex, Sandia National Laboratories, and Synhelion called Solar MEAD received US$ 3.2 million from the US Department of Energy to investigate the ideal conditions for maximizing heat transfer to the raw cement mix. The partnership was also given an honorable mention in the Eco-Innovator category of the Corporate Citizenship Innovation Awards run by the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship, a group devoted to furthering sustainability and CSR.
Carbon neutrality
The businesses reported the first-ever successful production of solar clinker in a small-scale batch process pilot at the beginning of 2022. Moving past that stage and into continuous, plant-like manufacturing confirms the technology’s enormous potential for industrial-scale application. Now, Cemex and Synhelion will move ahead with the construction of a solar-powered pilot cement factory at an industrial size.
The goal of this initiative is to become a net-zero CO2 firm by 2050. It is a component of Cemex’s Future in Action program, which focuses on attaining sustainable excellence through climate action, circularity, and resource management. Cemex Ventures and Cemex’s Swiss R&D Center are two crucial components of this approach. Through them, the business is identifying and funding the businesses they think will have the tried-and-true, scalable technology needed to achieve carbon neutrality.
