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    DOE awards Solidia Technologies for Carbon Capture and Utilization in Cement Manufacturing

    May 25, 2022
    Solidia Technologies will develop processes to produce synthetic supplementary cementitious materials (SCM) by using directly captured CO2 from the flu gas stream of an operating cement plant
    Image credit Solidia Technologies
    Solidia Concrete Pavers Being Measured 628e37d494264

    The U.S. Department of Energy has provided $2.1 million in funding to construction materials firm Solidia Technologies to formulate methods for carbonating its Solidia Cement.

    Solidia Technologies will develop processes to produce synthetic supplementary cementitious materials (SCM) by using directly captured CO2 from the flu gas stream of an operating cement plant. The funding will enable the firm to devise an efficient carbonation method and test it to determine the efficacy of using this material instead of cement in concrete. It will be a low-CO2 alternative to OPC.

    “The DOE funding will advance our CCUS technologies and synthetic SCMs that can be easily integrated into Portland Cement-based concrete formulations, offering manufacturers a solution that is sustainable environmentally and economically, both lowering the carbon footprint and offering an alternative to traditional SCMs, which are in increasingly short supply,” Solidia CEO Russell Hill said.

    Using the carbonated SCM will deliver a product with similar or better performance than concrete made with commonly used SCMs, like fly ash.

    Solidia Technologies has detailed plans to utilize CO2 in its cement processes for nearly 10 years. A 2013 white paper by researchers within the company showed that using Co2 instead of water in curing concrete reduced the carbon footprint and improved performance values.

    About the Author

    EnergyTech Staff

    Rod Walton is senior editor for EnergyTech.com. He has spent 14 years covering the energy industry as a newspaper and trade journalist.

    Walton formerly was energy writer and business editor at the Tulsa World. Later, he spent six years covering the electricity power sector for Pennwell and Clarion Events. He joined Endeavor and EnergyTech in November 2021.

    He can be reached at [email protected]. 

    EnergyTech is focused on the mission critical and large-scale energy users and their sustainability and resiliency goals. These include the commercial and industrial sectors, as well as the military, universities, data centers and microgrids.

    Many large-scale energy users such as Fortune 500 companies, and mission-critical users such as military bases, universities, healthcare facilities, public safety and data centers, shifting their energy priorities to reach net-zero carbon goals within the coming decades. These include plans for renewable energy power purchase agreements, but also on-site resiliency projects such as microgrids, combined heat and power, rooftop solar, energy storage, digitalization and building efficiency upgrades.