Pick up Carbon dioxide
Researchers looking at how to improve the situation have designed and built an experimental cement plant in Belgium to try to find solutions. “If we produce one tonne of cement, we produce 0.6 tons of carbon dioxide, where this carbon dioxide comes mainly from our raw materials,” said Jean Teolin, director of alternative resources at Heidelberg Cement. Therefore, we need to develop technologies to capture this CO2 so as not to emit it into the environment.
The plant has teamed up with researchers from the European research project (lime and low-density emission cement) to research such technologies. The result is a 60-meter-high plant with an experimental reactor already capable of absorbing 5 percent of total CO2 emissions from the plant. There is a large metal tube that is heated from the outside at about 1000 degrees. The raw material is dropped on top and slowly falls off. When this material is heated, it releases carbon dioxide. This pure carbon is the result of the Lilac project coordinator (Daniel Rennie) explaining that carbon dioxide can simply be captured above.
