In the midst of a lot of hooplah on Climate change, Carbon emissions, blah blah(US), blah blah (Kyoto Protocol), Calera seems to be doing some silent revolution.
What Calera aims to do is to use CO2 and other green house gases(the so called pollutants) to make carbonates or CO3,which then go to produce cement. Calera's process seems to be carbon neutral as they capture CO2 and permanently lock it up in building materials. Some of the largest CO2 polluting industries are Electricity plants both coal and gas fired, cement, iron and steel production.etc., Calera's process could be used in all these industries and have zero CO2 emissions, also produce cement along. To illustrate,- for every ton of electricity produced using coal, 2.5 tons of CO2 is emitted and this process will capture it and produce 5 tonnes of cement. Well it would replace the need for limestone mining.
Calera has already tested this technology in smaller scales with an electricity plant in US and is doing a similar project in Aussieland. Large scale implementation will be the key to answer questions on its viability for mass replication.
The process claimed to be cost effective(without any subsidies the western world enjoys) if proven, could easily be used in both
Well there is an Indian connection to this ! Green investor Vinod Khosla has invested $50M through his venture capital firm "Khosla Ventures". Also "Peabody" the world’s largest private-sector coal company is investing $15M in this venture.(Vested interest)
Good for the world as lesser CO2 is out in the open, but not good enough as we are still burning fossil fuels. Hope this is just the start of a chain of GREEN inventions, for there is a dire need now. As always said - "Necessity is the mother of Invention".
- Vishnu
Recently KKR invested 750 Crores(INR)in Dalmia cement, did they ever consider the risk of this technology spreading like mobile telephony - sure to doom the traditional cement companies if it does.
KKR is Kohlberg Kravis Roberts - a global private equity firm and not Kolkata Knight Riders. :-)
Saturday, May 8, 2010
CO2 to Cement - Will Calera's dream come true..
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3 comments:
Hey interesting read.
What form is this in? Liquid or gas? How would it replace limestone mining? From my understanding, it only compensates as a less polluting fuel option.
CO2 is in gaseous format in the process. Not getting too technical but they do add other chemicals to get the desired output, but CO2 is the main product and they need lots of it to produce CO3, which in turn is used to produce Cement.
Limestone is the primary raw material in traditional cement manufacturing. In this case if cement is being produced through other means - you dont have to mine it.
As you said its kinda lesser polluting option. But still something better than nothing. Long way before some real changes do happen
Seems too good to be true! Very informative. Would be one of the greatest things if this really gets happening on a large scale.
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