Matthias Mersmann
KHD / CTO
“Our new strategy signifies that for one, there will be a development towards decarbonized cement, and for second, that there will still be cement, even beyond the carbon discussion. Under this initiative we have aligned our competencies to provide the low-carbon technologies as well as services to support the cement producers intheir challenging route to net zero.”
KHD has been one of the leading company in the industry for many years could you please tell us about the structure of the company and the services it offers?
KHD tradition began already 1856 when the company was accepted as one of the strongest motors for Germany’s industrialization. Different kinds of industrial plants have been built by KHD and KHD was even famous for its trucks and tractors on these days. Today KHD focusses on building cement plants and the core and necessary machinery for the manufacture of cement. We are offering not only most advanced machines for the cement industry, but also full-line supply, automation and after sales services.
KHD is in preparation for the carbon zero period in 2050 that’s why you are carrying out serious work on carbon emissions, which is one of the biggest problems of the cement industry. Can you tell us about your carbon emission specific solutions and approach to the cement industry?
The transition into the low-carbon future will be a major challenge for the cement industry throughout the next decades. We clearly see this happening in two phases: in the first phase everything is about reducing the carbon emissions, while in the second phase the remaining carbon emissions, which will not have been reduced, will have to be captured in order to get to net zero. The first phase has already begun and the cement producers are about to intensify and done their ambitions to reduce their carbon footprint by more efficient production technologies, more use of alternative fuels and largely by replacing clinker in the cement with supplementary cementicious materials (SCM). The potential for using these principles varies for producers in different regions, and therefore carbon emissions reduction programs and durations vary from producer to producer. Sooner or later however, all cement suppliers will have to make this transformation. Optimized machinery and plants, such as KHD’s Pyrorotor AF incineration technology, calcined clay plants and the new digital productivity enhancer ProMax RTO, are there to help suppliers on this route.
Sustainability is a core feature of the cement industry in many respects, has always been and will always be. From the durability of cement as a building material, to its highly energy efficient manufacture up to the future carbon capture: cement is the most eco-friendly building material available on earth. The Pantheon in Rome is made of concrete and stand strong even after 200 years. That is real sustainability.
Sustainability is currently at the top of the agenda of many industries. What do you think is the importance and value of this concept, especially for the cement industry?
Sustainability is a core feature of the cement industry in many respects. It has always been and will always be too. From its durability as a building material to its highly energy-efficient production and future carbon capture, cement is the most environmentally friendly building material on the planet. The Pantheon in Rome is made of concrete and stand strong even after 200 years. This building is a good example of true sustainability. Even if the production of clinker may be decreasing a little bit in the future, there will be no future without cement. But cement has to be also decarbonized.
How do you think a cement factory can be truly environmentally friendly?
The production of every building material has an impact on the environment. This impact can be measured for instance by the amount of embodied carbon and the amount of embodied energy. Much to the surprise of many people, cement and concrete feature the lowest amount of both embodied carbon and energy compared to other materials like timber, glass, steel and plastics. So by this, cement plants produce an evironmentally friendly product. The plant itself should operate on the most energy efficient level and harmfull emissions should be minimized and kept inside permission levels. CO2 should be reduced and finally captured and made available for adjacent industrial use if possible.
One of the most important issues in sustainability studies is digitalization. What steps need to be taken in this area?
Digitization will be one of the most important enablers for sustainability in future. Digitization will not per se increase sustainability. But it brings with it the potential for optimizing the production process, finding new ways and options to extend the life of wearing parts and consumables, and many other synergistic optimizations to make the parts that make up a cement plant work better in total. In order to raise this potential, the cement plants will have to be passed into the industrial Internet of Things (IIOT), connecting the several machines and plants to a data system, which allows taking advantage of all the information gathered. Intelligent functionalities will allow to optimize lifetimes, working procedures and productivity. On another pathway of digitalization, real time optimizers (RTO) will use artificial and human intelligence to continuously run the production processes at their optimum.
In addition to cement production, important studies are being carried out to ensure the sustainability of cement products. What is required for the production of carbon-neutral products?
The biggest challenge in that respect is setting up the norms and standards for those novel, low-carbon cements and concretes. We have to consider, that the mechanical and chemical durability of those future building materials needs to satisfy the obvious criteria to ensure sufficient safety and lifetime of the buildings we will be making of them. These quality benchmarks must ensure durability and safety for several decades – which is much longer than we have time to test for. However, those quality norms and standards have partially already been established in some regions and we could made a big leap ahead if we just synchronize these on the basis of what is already available somewhere in another region. Besides this norms and standards-issue, we need to find a way to close the carbon circle if we want to totally decarbonize cement. We also need to know what to do with the captured carbon and find a regional or local use case to avoid long logistics transportation, which is likely to be economically and environmentally inefficient. For this we need to find sector coupling solutions among the cement industry and potentially the chemical and oil-& gas industry. This is a complex matter. Because not only the logistics need to be arranged, but also probably the business models, price and cost structures and repsonsibilities.
What transformations should factories undergo to make these products more efficient, usable, sustainable and most importantly carbon neutral?
This depends very much on the individual case and the region in which the plant operates. Unfortunately the is no blue-print solution for all cement plants. The biggest leaver for fast carbon reduction seems to be the replacement of clinker in cement. Preferably, anyone with access to readily available ashes and slags should mix SCMs into the cement product to the extent permitted by norms and standards. The use of alternative fuels should be maximised, because this also greatly reduces manufacturing costs. Finally the plants should already now begin to sketch their carbon utilization or storage route options and start thinking about carbon capture and how to do it best. The amount of investment necessary for this step requires thorough planning and will probably take some time and upfront planning and / or testing.
What would you say has been the biggest challenges in terms of implementing some of these sustainable solutions in your business?
The biggest obstacle in these activities is mankind’s preference for procrastination. The decarbonization pressure builds up slowly and the direct effects of the Paris Agreement are still acting in the hidden. Those who don’t rightly understand what will be coming up and think that there is stil much time until this all takes effect, they will probably have a hard landing some time soon. Adapting to the new thinking of decarbonization requires leaving behind some of the welladapted cornerstones of cement manufacture thinking which we have gotten accustomed to for 7 decades. Once the understanding is there, the will to act will follow suit and the technical solution is the smallest problem then.
How do you evaluate Turkiye regarding both the general situation of the cement industry and sustainability efforts?
Turkey will continue to have a very active cement industry, although the price pressure is huge and will probably remain to be high. For domestic cement production the decarbonization pressure will remain quite low for some few years, but for export clinker carbon border adjustment tax (CBAM) and comparable mechanisms in the destination regions will force those cement producers to start carbon reduction activities soon. Generally Turkiye has a huge potential to increase the use of alternative fuels. However, in order to utilize that, waste management and legislation frameworks need to be put in place. I also expect Turkiye to develop calcined clay capacities and thus reduce the clinker factor in cement. It will take some time until carbon capture technologies will be installed in Turkiye.
As KHD, what kind of strategy do you have for the coming period? What kind of solutions and services will you implement?
At KHD we have understood that the cement industry will go through the greatest ever transformation. Therefore we have initiated our long-term strategy under the term “Cement Beyond Carbon”. This signifies that for one, there will be a development towards decarbonized cement, and for second, that there will still be cement, even beyond the carbon discussion. Under this initiative we have aligned our competencies to provide the low-carbon technologies as described above as well as services to support the cement producers intheir challenging route to net zero.
