Comments on: Zero Carbon Cement Production with Solar Thermal

By: Ozzy

Ozzy — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 21:16:00 +0000

I would also be concerned about worker safety with an ultra-high-temperature process and carbon monoxide (aka the silent killer) as a byproduct. Sounds like this method will need a serious infusion of start-up cash to get the engineering just right to make it safe and reliable.

By: Guydauncey

Guydauncey — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 17:41:00 +0000

Any development like this is important, but to echo Brian:

“After coal-powered electricity, cement manufacture is the next biggest emitter of greenhouse gases”

Burning coal produces 12 Gigatonnes of CO2 a year
Burning oil also produces 12 Gigatonnes of CO2 a year
Burning natural gas produces 5.8 Gigatonnes of CO2 a year, plus a whole bunch of methane
Deforestation produces 5.5 Gigatonnes of CO2 a year
Cement production produces 2.7 Gigatonnes of CO2 a year

Source: My book The Climate Challenge: 101 Solutions to Global warming, page 29. (http://www.theclimatechallenge.ca)

By: Brian Leyde

Brian Leyde — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 13:44:00 +0000

“After coal-powered electricity, cement manufacture is the next biggest emitter of greenhouse gases”
You mean next largest industrial source or process and it is next largest after electricity production in general (Natural gas is rather large and emits CO2).

That’s a really neat process. I am curious how this would strip the other mentioned industrial activities of CO2 production and how much CO could be produced before saturating the market.