A consortium led by Ecocem has been awarded EUR4m in research funding as apart of the EIC Pathfinder Challenges 2024, funded by the EU's Horizon Europe programme. The grant will support the consortium's work to optimise the environmental compatibility of electric arc furnace (EAF) slag for low-carbon cement.
As the steel sector increasingly uses EAFs, replacing blast furnaces, to decarbonise its production processes, the nature of the by-products is also changing.
As a pioneer in the optimisation of slags for use as cementitious materials, Ecocem’s new research will aim to optimise EAF slag reactivity and make it work effectively as a supplementary cementitious material without compromising the durability of the cement it is used to make.
The project was submitted to the Pathfinder Challenge 2 call: “Towards Cement and Concrete as a Carbon Sink.” The submission, led by Ecocem’s award-winning scientist Simon Blotevogel, was developed in collaboration with ArcelorMittal, the University of Toulouse, the FehS Building Materials Institute, the CNRS – Géosciences Environnement Toulouse, the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf and the ETH.
Eoin Condren, Ecocem’s corporate development executive director, commented: “This recognition confirms Ecocem’s position at the forefront of sustainable innovation in the cement industry. For many years, we have been pioneering the use of a range of slags and cementitious materials to create scalable and durable low-carbon cement. Thanks to this grant, we will continue our groundbreaking work as the steel industry transitions to new manufacturing processes, delivering a viable solution for a new generation of waste from steel."
The programme will run for the next four years, with testing taking place in Paris in partnership with ArcelorMittal.
