The commissioning activities over April has involved successful test firing the furnace burners, the testing of each process line, a furnace refractory dry-out, cold feed conveying, and extraction system testing.
On the 7th of May 2019, the LEILAC consortium partners and External Advisory Board met to celebrate the finish of construction with a ribbon cutting event at the LEILAC pilot plant. Supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme and extensive industrial backing, this event was a significant moment in the development of Calix’s Direct Separation technology, and the culmination of many years of hard work by all of the project partners.
The critical next steps for Project LEILAC involve “fingerprinting” the operation of the plant over May and June, including initial runs on lime and cement meal. These initial runs will significantly de-risk the technology and conclusively demonstrate its technical principles. The longer-term runs over the remainder of 2019 and 2020 will focus on extending the operational limits of the technology, as well as long-term studies on issues such as mechanical limits and fouling and corrosion, in preparation for scale-up designs for cement applications.
Calix is also pleased to announce that a new €1.5m working capital facility has been agreed with the Efic in support of Project LEILAC, which will support the project financing through to the end of February 2020.
Testing is now set to commence and start to validate the performance of the pilot, and a significant step in enabling Direct Separation to become one of the principal methods of capturing the carbon emissions from the lime and cement industries.
