Carbon capture is a loss-maker for Anhui Conch

Anhui Conch has invested US$10m in carbon capture equipment at its Baimashan plant near the Yangtze river in eastern China.

The pilot carbon capture and storage (CCS) project, installed last year in the city of Wuhu in Anhui province, separates and purifies 50,000t of carbon dioxide (CO₂) a year, which Conch will sell to industrial consumers, reports Reuters.

As a pilot project the technology currently is designed to capture a small percentage of the 1.5Mt of CO₂ generated by a single kiln line, while finding a buyer of the captured CO₂ also has to be solved.

"This is part of our social responsibility and if we only considered the economics we wouldn't have done it," said Jin Feng, Baimashan plant manager.  "The local market (for CO₂) is limited so we have no plans to expand," he told Reuters, speaking during a recent tour of the facility.

"Conch has taken the lead in carbon capture and it is loss-making for them ... but we hope the entire industry can follow. We are preparing to deploy this equipment," said Cui xingtai, vice-president of China National Building Materials Co Ltd. "We also need to consider how to earn money from it."