Phil Hodgson, MD of Calix and Chairman of the LEILAC-2 Executive Board, said:
“We welcome HeidelbergCement’s commitment to their Hanover site as another crucial milestone in the project, and we look forward to working with HeidelbergCement and our other LEILAC-2 partners to make the project a success, and demonstrate at meaningful scale the ability of the technology to help the cement and lime industries mitigate CO2 emissions”
HeidelbergCement’s Chairman of the Managing Board Dr. Dominik von Achten said:
“The LEILAC technology has the potential to enable the cement and lime industries to efficiently capture their process emissions on an industrial scale,”
“The project in Hanover is one of several promising CO2 capture technologies that we are currently testing at full speed within the HeidelbergCement Group.”
Jan Theulen, Director Alternative Resources, HeidelbergCement said:
“The LEILAC-1 project has successfully demonstrated that both limestone and raw meal can be processed, that the unavoidable process CO2 is successfully separated, and that the technology fundamentally works. With the tireless efforts by the project team – with multiple organisations contributing their time and expertise from across the globe – we are confident that this scale-up step can be achieved.”
Davide Zampini, Global R&D Head of CEMEX, said:
“We are very enthusiastic about our continued participation in the LEILAC-2 project. Amongst the different technologies that we are pursuing, it is one of the most promising technologies to mitigate CO2 emissions in clinker production. We look forward to supporting Calix and the LEILAC team, and contribute to key developments in the pilot project. Above all, key members of the industry are collaborating to accelerate the possibility of adopting the technology.”
The LEILAC-2 Project sets some very ambitious challenges for our technology. To operate at best efficiency, LEILAC will need to be closely integrated with an operating facility, which adds considerable complexity and risk. The Project Team, led by our own GM – Engineering Emma Bowring, has done a truly fantastic job during difficult times, with multiple COVID restrictions operating at different times across Europe.
The technology once proven at this scale, should be low-cost, scalable, replicable and retrofittable. Starting with the fully operational Hanover plant, the project is aiming to demonstrate how the design can be retrofitted to existing cement plants without dramatically increasing their costs.
By providing a low-cost means of capturing hard-to-abate CO2 emissions, the LEILAC process has the potential to allow the cement and lime industries to efficiently capture their process emissions while continuing to safely and efficiently operate. Our aim is to enable industry to serve society and efficiently meet market demand, while achieving the Paris Agreement’s ambitions.
Construction is targeted for completion by end 2023, with the first commercial demonstration in early 2024.
In January 2021, CEMEX, a participant in the LEILAC-1 project, also announced it would join LEILAC-2 with a further commitment in cash and in-kind to help develop the technology.
The European Commission officially approved Cemex joining the LEILAC-2 project following unanimous support from the LEILAC-2 consortium. The LEILAC-2 project is focussed on scaling Calix’s CO2 mitigation technology for the cement and lime industries to demonstration scale at HeidelbergCement’s Hanover cement plant, following a successful piloting of the technology via the LEILAC-1 project in Belgium.
CEMEX has committed in-kind support to the project given its strong technical expertise and knowledge of the cement production process, as well as a cash contribution which will be applied to the construction phase of the project.
The completed LEILAC 1 pilot alongside the HeidelbergCement plant in Lixhe, Belgium.
