The success of the The Low Emissions Intensity Lime and Cement (LEILAC) project to separate and capture CO2 from the cement production process will enable a second LEILAC 2 project to be pipelined.



The LEILAC project, located at the Lixhe cement plant in Belgium, which started operations to capture CO2 emissions from the cement production process using Calix technology in May 2019, will continue to be tested until the end of 2020. 

The LEILAC 2 project will have a new reactor, about a fifth of the size of a conventional cement plant and will focus on the ultimate destination of the extracted CO2.

This time the reactor will be integrated into the cement-making process and project planners aim to electrify heat required for the clinker production.

LEILAC 2 will incorporate about 'half of the partners from its predecessor, with Calix and HeidelbergCement still at its core," says ENDS report. 



Jan Theulen of project partner HeidelbergCement says: "We want to be ready with the technology once the [carbon] price is there to make it commercially viable." He adds, "it’s a bit of fighting your way through. But if we don’t do it now, and we wait until the carbon price is EUR100/t, then we’d need another 10 years to do it."

LEILAC partners include: HeidelbergCement, Lhoist, Cemex, Calix, PSE, Carbon Truct, TNO, Tarmac (CRH), Quantis, Solvay, Imperial College London and the European Union's Horizon 2020 research innovation programme.