The U.S. Department of Energy awarded $5 million in funding to Chart Industries’ Sustainable Energy Solutions to design, build, commission and operate an engineering-scale Cryogenic Carbon Capture (CCC) process at Central Plains Cement Co.’s cement plant in Sugar Creek, Mo.
Central Plains Cement is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Eagle Materials Inc.
The project will scale the CCC system to a capacity of nominally 30 tonnes of carbon dioxide per day with the intention of demonstrating that it captures more than 95% of the CO2 from the flue gas slip stream and produces a CO2 stream that is more than 95% pure. It is one of 12 projects awarded by the DOE to advance point-source carbon capture and storage technologies that can capture at least 95% of CO2 emissions generated from natural gas power and industrial facilities that produce commodities like cement and steel.
Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Exxon recognized the CCC technology as the most competitive carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) solution, noted Chart Industries. This is based on the determination that the cost to produce cement and capture CO2 using the Sustainable Energy Solutions system is only 24% higher than producing cement with no CO2 capture (not accounting for any value for the CO2 being captured). Other capture technologies range from a 38% to 134% increase in the cost of producing cement and capturing CO2 versus producing cement with no CO2 capture.
