Consortium partners looking to generate electricity using supercritical carbon dioxide technology
CEMEX have joined an innovative consortium of 21 partners to deliver a ground-breaking supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) waste heat recovery system at their Prachovice cement plant in the Czech Republic.
Consisting of both profit and non-profit organizations, the consortium will use a special configuration of heat exchangers and heat-transfer fluid for higher efficiency. The plant is expected to generate about 2MW of electrical power, which is around 8% of the cement plant requirements.
‘The new sCO2 technology has a smaller footprint and higher operational flexibility than conventional power plant cycles, which produce power from turbines using water or steam,’ said Karol Czubara, director of CEMEX’s Prachovice cement plant.
‘The sCO2 cycles use carbon dioxide that is in a supercritical state – at a temperature and pressure above its critical point where liquid and gas phases are not distinguishable.’
The consortium has obtained nearly €14 million funding from the Horizon 2020 Industrial (Waste) Heat to Power conversion call, to drive implementation and testing of the technology over a four-year project period starting in June 2021.
CEMEX say the project further demonstrates their clear Climate Action strategy and shows further progression on upscaling ground-breaking technologies to decarbonize the business and meet EU and CEMEX climate targets.
As a global group, CEMEX aim to reduce CO2 emissions by 35% by 2030 compared with 1990 and to deliver net-zero CO2 concrete by 2050.
In 2020, CEMEX’s European operations had already reduced CO2 emissions by around 35%, and became the first company in the sector to align to the EU’s aspiration to reduce emissions by at least 55% by 2030.
