Inside a high-tech cement laboratory -- The path from concept to commercialization

 
You're only given a little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it. -- Robin Williams

MIT’s The Spark newsletter recently highlighted a company working on enabling cement production that produces far less carbon emissions than traditional processes.

Cement, the glue that binds together the aggregates that make concrete the amazing building material that it has been since ancient Roman engineers began using it, requires high heat to produce.

Startup Sublime Systems has developed a technique using electrochemistry to produce cement at a much lower cost to the environment.

The Spark’s article describes the approach.  Equally interesting to me is the progress the company has made from bench scale to demonstration scale, and their plan to move on to commercial scale. It is a fascinating look into the challenges faced by any company trying to move from concept to commercialization.

TIP: Subscribe to MIT The Spark (https://www.technologyreview.com/ )

Here are excerpts from the article in The Spark …

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The Spark
By Casey Crownhart • 07.05.23

Hello hello, welcome back to The Spark!

A few weeks ago, I found myself in a room where fluorescent lights reflected off the stainless steel tanks lining the walls. The setup reminded me of an exceedingly high-tech craft brewery.

I wasn’t at a cider tasting, but on a visit to Sublime Systems (https://sublime-systems.com/ ), a Boston-based startup working to clean up one of the world’s toughest climate challenges: cement. Today, making cement involves a whole lot of fossil fuels, and this one material accounts for about 8% of global emissions.

But it might not have to be that way. So for the newsletter this week, come along with me to see what the startup is up to, and how its process could change the way we build.

To sum it up briefly, cement is a climate nightmare for two main reasons.

One, the process used to make cement requires super-high temperatures which today basically means you have to burn fossil fuels in the process. Second, there are chemical reactions involved in transforming minerals into working cement, and those release carbon dioxide.

Sublime’s answer is to use electrochemistry. The company’s cofounders, Yet-Ming Chiang and Leah Ellis, both made their mark in the battery world before turning to building materials. While at MIT, the duo developed a set of chemical reactions powered by electricity that can transform minerals into the cement we know and love today. They cofounded Sublime Systems in 2020.

What I was most interested in during my visit was seeing how the company is taking lab results and transforming them to work at a much larger scale.

Things started out small: the first time she and a labmate made cement, it was about the same volume as a single die.

Years later, that small scale is almost inconceivable when you look around the company’s pilot facility. The ceilings feel dozens of feet high, and I wouldn’t be able to get my arms around the tanks that line the room.

This facility started up in November 2022, recalls Mike Corbett, Sublime’s head of engineering. The team moved quickly to build it, going from design to execution in about nine months.

The company is doing something entirely new by bringing electrochemistry to cement production. But they’ve been able to leverage technology from other industries, like mining and chemical production, to find equipment that will work for what they’re trying to do. “You can usually beg and borrow from other industries to solve similar technical problems,” Corbett says.

The pilot line is a huge upgrade from the early days, but as Ellis put it, in the grand scheme of the industry, it’s still “a cement plant for ants.”

The next step for the startup is to build a demonstration facility producing around 100 tons per day. “That’s the size where you’re no longer invisible to the cement world,” Ellis says. The current goal is to have that facility running in 2025. After that, there’s yet another step: commercial scale, at about a million tons a year.

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TIP: Google sublime systems cement
Some results …

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Electrochemical Synthesis of Low-Carbon Cement
Project Innovation + Advantages:
Cement is responsible for 8% of global CO2 emissions. Currently, the only economical way to make Portland cement’s key ingredient, lime, is by thermally decomposing limestone. This reaction contributes ~75% of cement’s emissions. Sublime Systems (Sublime) will build an electrochemical system to produce lime using off-peak renewable electricity and calcium sources that do not release CO2. The lime produced may possess exceptional purity, consistency, and reactivity, enabling next-generation low-carbon cements. If successful and scaled, Sublime’s electrochemical synthesis of lime would reduce energy-related emissions in the U.S. from lime and cement making while simultaneously providing ancillary grid services, enabling proliferation of renewables.
https://arpa-e.energy.gov/technologies/projects/electrochemical-synthesis-low-carbon-cement
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Online published (draft) 25 OCT 2022
Dr. Jutta Lauf for NATO ENSEC CoE
Is de-carbonising the construction industry possible? An overview of advances in materials and processes
Jutta Lauf
Dr. Jutta Lauf was a Research Fellow at the NATO Energy Security Centre of Excellence from 2020 to
2022.
Corresponding address: NATO ENERGY SECURITY CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE, Research and Lessons Learned
Division, Šilo g. 5A, LT-10322 Vilnius, Lithuania, NATO Energy Security Centre of Excellence, info@enseccoe.org
Cement, a key product for construction, is by mass the largest manufactured product on Earth.
Combined with water and mineral aggregates it forms cement-based materials (e.g., concrete
and mortar), the second most used substance in the world after water. Cement based building
materials are energy and cost efficient1, but the globally large scale usage (4.6 *1012 tons in
2015)1 led to 3% of globally emitted carbon dioxide (CO2) in 20202. Additional advantages are
the wide availability of the raw materials, a sufficient long period of time before settling and
its longevity. All these properties make it a versatile material, which is used in many of NATO’s
infrastructures (Figure 1).
Figure 1: NATO headquarter in Brussel, Blvd Leopold III, 1110 Brussels, Belgium. It was
constructed as a “Green building” mainly from concrete. Generally the “green” credentials are
related to the operation of the building, not its construction.4; 3
The traditional form of cement is the so-called ordinary Portland cement (OPC). The
production process requires grinding and calcining (heating to high temperature of approx.
1450 °C) a mixture mainly consisting of limestone and clay. The resulting intermediate
material - known as clinker - is ground to a fine powder with 3–5% gypsum added to form OPC.
The production of OPC generates on average 842kg CO2 per ton of clinker. Fossil fuel
combustion is responsible for less than 40% of total CO2 emissions, while limestone (CaCO3)
decomposition during calcination to calcium oxide (CaO) is responsible for the remainder5; 1.
In essence, CO2 emissions from clinker production is a mixture of both, an unavoidable
chemical reaction, and the heating process to start the chemical reaction. Therefore,
increasing the energy efficiency of clinker production is not sufficient to significantly reduce
emissions. Carbon capture technologies are necessary to achieve this goal. Significant
https://enseccoe.org/data/public/uploads/2022/11/emissions-in-construction.pdf
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Jean Steinhardt served as Librarian, Aramco Americas (https://americas.aramco.com/ ), Engineering Division, for 13 years. He now heads Jean Steinhardt Consulting LLC, producing the same high quality research that he performed for Aramco.

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