Funding Opportunity
We are seeking £2.1m to establish an office and lab facility in Cambridge and to fund commercial operations to the point of volume cement production.
£2.1M
Seed
Overview
Concrete is the second most used material on earth, behind only water. Cement is the binding agent used in concrete, and its production is responsible for 8% of global CO2 emissions. Cambridge Electric Cement (CEC) has developed a technology for recovering and reusing cement from demolition waste making zero carbon cement a possibility.
They have demonstrated that recovered cement paste is a viable substitute for the flux used in steelmaking. Rather than producing a waste slag, our process outputs “clinker” (the material produced by conventional cement kilns). The steelmaking process is unaffected and production costs are reduced.
The Challenge
Conventional cement production involves heating limestone to 1,450°C. Heating a massive kiln to high temperatures accounts for about half of the emissions. The remainder results from converting limestone to lime through the release of CO2. Producing zero carbon cement requires addressing both mechanisms.
Recharging used cement has theoretically been possible, but the conditions (e.g. temperature, ventilation, elemental mix) have to be just right. Without a viable route to doing so, the industry has focussed decarbonisation efforts on substituting fractional volumes of cement with “supplementary cementitious materials.”
The Solution
CEC recognised that the conditions for recharging cement exist within the electric arc furnaces used in recycling steel. The temperature is high enough to recharge the cement paste and to vaporize impurities.
From a steelmaking perspective, recovered cement paste works in place of conventional flux and has no adverse effect on the steel. By switching to CEC’s process, steelmakers can reduce both their operating costs and their carbon footprint.
No alterations are required for the furnaces and the cement produced is expected to cost about the same as conventional cement.
Patents and Publications
- Patent Pending: Process for the combined manufacture of steel and cement clinker
- Original document (espacenet.com)
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