Decarbonizing our operations with CCUS
The Carbon2Business project aims to capture CO₂ from Holcim’s plant at Lägerdorf and repurpose it as an industrial raw material. From 2029, the project will capture more than 1 million tons of CO₂ emissions annually, making cement production at the Lägerdorf plant entirely net zero.
The captured CO₂ can be processed into e-methanol through methanol synthesis or reprocessed as a raw material, for example to produce plastics. With this utilisation project, Holcim is creating new value chains and developing technologies to enable the decarbonisation of industrial companies beyond the cement industry. The project was awarded a grant from the European Union Innovation Fund in 2022.
The technology behind the project
The €109.8 million investment from the EU will be used to build a new kiln line with an innovative oxyfuel process. Combustion air is substituted with pure oxygen resulting in a CO₂-rich flue gas, which is then cooled down, purified and liquified in a Carbon Processing Unit (CPU).
Alternative capturing concepts in the cement industry are based on so-called end of pipe solutions, where CO₂ needs to be separated and processed. Oxyfuel technology allows an integrated approach which is more energy efficient. The technology captures almost 100% of CO₂ emissions during cement production. The flue gas is then further processed into a high-purity CO₂ gas as a feedstock for the chemical industry and used as a raw material for other industries.