Oxygen for environmentally friendly cement

Westfalen supports the “catch4climate” project

CO₂ is urgently needed in many branches of industry. This applies, for example, to the production of fertilizers, fuels for long-haul flights or plastic-based medical products. At the same time, however, many industrial processes also emit large amounts of CO₂ into the atmosphere, including cement production. The “catch4climate” project was launched to capture CO₂ as a waste product more efficiently and to make the entire cement production process more environmentally friendly. The project is part of the research company CI4C GmbH und Co. KG, founded in 2019, which is backed by the four European cement manufacturers Buzzi-Dyckerhoff, Heidelberg Materials, SCHWENK Zement and Vicat. This project is also supported by Westfalen. The Münster-based company supplies oxygen, which is an essential component of the three-year project.

With “catch4climate”, the participating companies want to create the conditions for the widespread use of CO₂ capture technologies in the cement industry. This is because, to date, carbon dioxide for industrial processes has been obtained almost exclusively from fossil fuels. In order to find a sustainable and environmentally friendly approach here, a new rotary kiln was designed specifically for the project, in which cement is to be produced using a so-called pure-oxyfuel process at the SCHWENK plant in Mergelstetten (Baden-Württemberg). In this process, pure oxygen is used in the furnace instead of air. “By using oxygen, the CO₂content in the furnace exhaust gas can be increased to about 90 percent. The CO₂ that is produced in the process is then prepared for further use in an attached processing plant,” explains Claus Fischer, Key Account Manager at Westfalen.

The entire oxyfuel kiln plant, in which the cement manufacturer is investing over 120 million euros, is expected to be commissioned in the first quarter of 2025 and will subsequently be used exclusively for research and development. Fischer: “We are very pleased to be able to participate in this exciting and future-oriented project as a gas supplier. Ideally, it will not only be possible to reduce CO₂ emissions, but also to help counteract the recurring CO₂ shortage in the market. In other words, CO₂ will be captured where it is unavoidable so that it can be diverted to where it is needed.”