After very good results from the first phase of Project LEILAC, further development and scale-up of the Calix technology has started.
The first LEILAC installation was completed at HeidelbergCement’s 1.5 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) integrated Lixhe plant in Belgium and inaugurated mid 2019. Led by Emma Bowring, the new 100,000 tonnes per annum (tpa) process emissions capture facility will be operational by late 2024. Calix has appointed project management executive,
Emma Bowring, to also lead LEILAC-2 as part of the Calix executive management team. Emma has 15 years experience in project management and business development with Sinclair Knight Merz/Jacobs Engineering Group, having worked across a number of industries including international development, infrastructure, oil and gas, health, justice and commercial sectors.
Originally from Australia, Emma has lived and worked around Australia, the Pacific Islands, Asia, Russia and now the United Kingdom. Notably, as project manager, Emma successfully delivered a complex AUD50m engineering, procurement, and construction management (EPCM) project involving construction and capacity building programs in the Solomon Islands. We look forward to seeing what she will bring to LEILAC-2.
Emma Bowring, LEILAC Project Leader
“I love working on projects that make a difference and contribute socially and environmentally. This, combined with the challenge of managing remote teams and complex international projects, is what brought me to Calix.”
The LEILAC-2 key objectives are:
• Construction of a demonstration plant that will aim to capture around 20 per cent of a full-scale cement plant’s process CO2 emissions (100,000 tpa of CO2), equivalent to 100 per cent of a large lime kiln’s process emissions, for minimal energy penalty other than compressing the CO2.
• Successful demonstration of up to a four-times scale-up of the technology for around twice the capital cost of the LEILAC-1 facility, confirming cost-efficient CO2 capture for the lime and cement industries.
• Prove the effective retrofit and full integration of the technology into a cement plant’s operations.
• Demonstrate the efficiency and stability of the complete cement-kiln process and high-quality clinker output when integrating Calix’s CO2 separation technology.
• Showcase a modular, replicable, retrofit design for accelerated commercial deployment that delivers flexible scalability for varying operation size and configurations, agility to adopt the technology and decrease emissions progressively, and a broad range of options for captured CO2 utilisation and sequestration. These factors can eliminate the need for large capital expenditure and significant asset write-downs.
• Demonstrate the operation of direct separation kilns for lime and cement using renewable sources of energy such as biomass and renewable sources of electricity, bringing the running of the plant to net zero CO2 emissions and enabling a move away from high carbon-emitting gas or coal-fired plants.
• Enable lime and cement kiln processing plants with a cost-efficient solution to effectively use intermittent renewable energy sources, with rapid ramp up/down rates leveraging electricity and load balancing techniques for grid stability.
LEILAC (Low Emissions Intensity Lime And Cement) is a European Union Horizon 2020 (H2020) research and innovation project.
Calix’s technology is being piloted with the world’s largest cement and lime companies to mitigate their carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions dramatically without significant energy or capital penalty.
Find out more about project LEILAC