From grey to green: Engineering the future of cement

CURA is developing electrochemical pre-calcination carbon capture technology that removes carbon dioxide from cement feedstocks before they enter the conventional manufacturing process. The company believes its approach could help tackle one of the world's largest industrial emissions challenges while opening a new path for low-carbon cement production.

“Cement is responsible for about eight per cent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions,” says Phil De Luna, CURA’s co-founder and Chief Technology Officer. “It's the single largest industrial source of emissions—more than steel, transportation, vehicles, or agriculture.”

Cement is typically made with limestone that has been heated to remove carbon dioxide in a process called calcination. According to De Luna, roughly two-thirds of emissions from cement come from this step, making it difficult to address through conventional efficiency improvements alone.

CURA’s proprietary pre-calcination electrochemical technology removes carbon dioxide before conventional calcination, effectively preventing generation of those emissions during that part of the cement-making process. The result is a calcium product that can move through manufacturing and generate fewer process emissions, while the separated carbon dioxide can be stored or used for other purposes.

Knowing that the cement and concrete industry is well established, CURA is building this system with its end users in mind. The company’s at-scale goal, De Luna says, is to manufacture its technology as retrofit-ready equipment that cement manufacturers can deploy in their existing facilities, without replacing the infrastructure they rely on.

Setting up in Alberta

With several major construction industry players in Alberta, CURA co-founders De Luna, Sabrina Scott and Erin Bobicki looked to the province when deciding where to grow the company.

CURA co-founders De Luna, Sabrina Scott and Erin Bobicki

This decision ultimately brought them to Alberta Innovates and Jelena Sapkovskaja, a member of its Strategic Industries Aerospace, Defence and Advanced Materials team.

As a Technology Lead, Sapkovskaja supports promising companies in the fields of aerospace, defence, advanced materials and advanced manufacturing as they move through their Alberta Innovates journey. That process often starts with helping clients refine their project plans to access funding and other support programs.

“I was so impressed with the team. They're very young, very smart, very sharp,” Sapkovskaja says when asked about working with the team.

Sapkovskaja says CURA stood out by fitting within several Alberta Innovates profiles, including advanced materials, carbon management and sustainable construction.

Scaling With Unconventional Resources

The project, which launched earlier this year, seeks to deploy CURA’s technology in a 100-tonne per year pilot. It is also validating more sustainable feedstock alternatives, including a locally sourced, calcium-rich agricultural byproduct as an alternative to the freshly mined limestone traditionally used by the cement industry.

This presents an opportunity for both parties: CURA secures a reliable feedstock source and the facilities producing the byproduct can reduce their stockpile, which can quickly add up due to the high cost of disposal and limited opportunities for reuse.

“We want to build a commercial facility that can use this byproduct to produce hydrated lime and cement,” says De Luna. "That will reduce the amount of waste burden and potentially create more opportunities for the facilities producing the byproduct.”

Early results from CURA’s pilot project have been encouraging. The company has already validated the use of the byproduct as a viable feedstock and is continuing to scale its technology, working toward a larger pilot and demonstration facility that will produce 30,000 tonnes of cement each year.

Although CURA is using the agriculture waste in its first demonstration, the company’s technology is designed to work with the conventional limestone feedstocks already used by cement producers.

For De Luna, the longer-term ambition goes well beyond the company’s current projects.

“Our goal is to deploy our technology at every cement facility around the world where the feedstock is limestone,” he says. “We want to build technology to decarbonize every cement plant in the world.”