CCUS Panel Discussion

With EnviroTech 2025 just around the corner, this first episode of the World Cement podcast takes a look back at the CCUS-focused Panel Discussion from last year’s show.

This episode includes the first half of the panel discussion and features insights from:

• Nate Lozanoski – Global Sr. Offering Manager - Carbon Capture Solutions  at Honeywell UOP
• Burcin Temel Mckenna – Global Head of Carbon capture at Ramboll  
• Paul Monaghan – Group Head of Sustainability at Mannok
• Ângela Nunes – Innovation Director at SECIL

Stay tuned for the second half of the discussion coming up in Episode 2.
Remember to support the World Cement podcast by subscribing, rating, and reviewing!

Creators and Guests

Host

David Bizley

As well as the day-to-day editing of content and working with article authors and advertisers, he is actively involved in the commissioning of material for both the magazine and its expanding online presence.

What is World Cement Podcast?

The World Cement podcast: a podcast series for professionals in the cement industry.

David Bizley: 00:01

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the very first episode of the World Cement podcast. My name is David Bizley, senior editor of World Cement, and I'll be your host over the coming episodes. Over the following weeks, we're going to be talking to experts from across the industry to get their thoughts on some of the key topics facing cement producers in the twenty first century. For our first two episodes, however, we're going to be taking a look back. Specifically, back to March 2024 and the closing panel discussion held at EnviroTek Lisbon, which focused almost entirely on the topic of carbon capture.

David Bizley: 00:38

With the 2025 edition of EnviroTek coming up very soon, this seemed like a good opportunity to take stock and consider whether the thoughts and discussions raised a year ago still apply today. Or perhaps, new challenges and new opportunities have emerged since. So sit back and settle into the first half of our CCUS panel discussion featuring insights and wisdom from Nate Lozanowski of Honeywell UOP, Bertrand McKenna from Ramboll, Paul Monahan from Mannock, and Angela Nunez of Cecil. Thank you. I just wanted to take a moment to remind you to register for World Cement.

David Bizley: 01:18

It's free of charge and gives you access to the latest issues of World Cement, both in print and online. Every issue comes packed full of regional analysis, technical articles, project case studies, and the latest industry news. Simply head over to worldcement.com, click the magazine tab, and register today. It's as simple as that. Happy reading.

David Bizley: 01:49

Thank you so much for joining me today, and I know we've got a whole list of topics to get through. But we're gonna kick off with a topic that has come up almost unprompted almost every single q and a session, which, of course, is carbon capture. So to start off with you, Nate, what would you say currently, from your perspective, is the the biggest challenge to implementing carbon capture across the cement industry?

Nate Lozanoski: 02:12

Yeah. So just maybe a quick two second introduction, Pluto. Nate Loznanowski from Honeywell UOP. We're a carbon capture technology licensor. We've traditionally played in the oil and gas base for about a hundred years.

Nate Lozanoski: 02:23

And when it comes to different types of carbon capture technologies that we offer, as you described, there's multiple ones in the market through your presentation. We have hot potassium carbonate, first and second generation amine technologies, pressure swing adsorption, cryogenics, and then any combination of those that we

David Bizley: 02:39

would be able to supply

Nate Lozanoski: 02:40

to the market. So when we think about being technology agnostic, even as a technology licensor, I would say we bring a pretty agnostic view to finding a solution that works right for each cement plant. So when you talk about what are some of the challenges outside of the the pipeline, the regulatory environment, and finding projects that work, it's really getting into the site specific conditions. Every site's gonna have different utility pricing, utility availabilities, plot space, c o two concentrations, c o two purities for whether it's going into a pipeline, methanol production on the sustainable aviation fuel. When you talk about the challenges, it's really getting into those site details and understanding it.

Nate Lozanoski: 03:19

And I don't think there's necessarily a one solution fits all for the cement industry. There are gonna be certain technologies that are more attractive at different sites than others because of all those conditions.

David Bizley: 03:29

K. Thank you, Nick. Burcin, I saw you nodding along. Would you like to add anything to Nate's comments there?

Burcin Temel Mckenna: 03:35

I completely agree with Nathan. When I say, like, it really depends on the site, and then then that sounds like a very typical consulting answer, but it really is in this case. And considering those utilities and what are the heat recovery options, do you need to do everything on renewable electricity, or do you have access to biomass or biogas? All of these are different parts of the puzzle that's going to influence your CapEx and OpEx.

David Bizley: 04:10

Thank you. And, Angela, I see you nodding along. Would you do you have anything to add to that?

Ângela Nunes: 04:15

Yeah. Maybe from the point of view of the cement producers. For us, it's a quite new process. So our focus is to produce cement, and this is something completely new, out of the box. So something aside or something that must be integrated in our new process.

Ângela Nunes: 04:33

The first question for us is when we should be able to start this because we heard about so many technologies, but some of them, they are not really set already, for to be installed. And this is one of the question marks that we have. Another one is the need for infrastructures Because for instance, in Portugal, there there is a huge need from, the grid. The power we have available in the grid, especially renewable energy is not enough for these consumptions. This is a tool in so many points in the country.

Ângela Nunes: 05:13

Then you have the infrastructure needed for c o two. So there are a lot of kits that need to be assessed to get everything ready on time. So the right time, the right technology, and the infrastructure for us is our main concerns.

David Bizley: 05:30

Okay. And, Paul, from your position at Mannok, does what the others are saying ring true? Does that echo with you?

Paul Monaghan: 05:36

Many, many challenges. Yeah. Because at a macro level, you know, for the cement producers in Ireland that basically there's an excess in the market. So So the excess needs to go somewhere, and it normally goes into, for us, it's The UK market. So for us, it's The UK European market.

Paul Monaghan: 05:50

We see that other UK and European situations are more advanced than us, and potentially what that does is give others a competitive advantage. Logistically, we're probably the most challenged cement factory on the island. We're 90 to a hundred miles away from the nearest port. So that just that really does exercises given the fact that we're the most important regional employer, where we are about the future. So really what we're talking about is the future of the industry and the future employment opportunities.

Paul Monaghan: 06:22

And if we bring it down to the micro level in terms of a carbon capture technology, for Manic, we take a very step by step approach knowing really that the policy and the supports and infrastructure are at least several years away. This is just the reality, for us. I I understand from other presentations, and with the EU innovation funding, and if that funding is available, I understand they will pick the most mature technology, and it's it's a major problem for the industry. So if they have the opportunity to to capture large scale and put it into permanent storage, I I understand that. We would take a slightly different view.

Paul Monaghan: 06:57

I suppose maybe being both a cement and a concrete, and building products manufacture. We are gonna look to demonstrate a number of smaller demonstration projects, maybe focusing on carbon curing and mineral carbonization, and prove them out so we can focus on the utilization. And on that, I I just want to say really, I think the industry has a responsibility, given the fact that it's gonna take very, very significant public funding, to decarbonize the cement industry and particularly in the carbon capture area. So I think there's a a kind of, a responsibility on the industry to help develop those utilization opportunities. And we will need help from maybe in the in people in the room to help, identify those and and and deliver on them.

Paul Monaghan: 07:45

But, and that number might only be 5% of the total or whatever that number is. The number for me is not really important. It's the fact that we, demonstrate in good faith that we're good neighbors and that we're part of the solution. And, yes, the storage, when it becomes available, and there's very little available in the world at the moment, okay, that is being developed, then that will come and will be ready. But we would like to show also some leadership in carbon capture in the market that that we're located in, and we would like to do a number of small demonstration or pilot projects to demonstrate our good faith.

David Bizley: 08:21

Yeah. Thank you. And then back to you, Nate. A lot of the roadmaps for achieving net zero have this deadline at sort of 2050. In terms of the technology readiness level of carbon capture, are we on track to meet those deadlines?

David Bizley: 08:35

Because by all estimates, carbon capture is gonna be doing a lot of the heavy lifting of getting us to net zero.

Nate Lozanoski: 08:41

Yeah. So I think each technology, at at least in the oil and gas space, has been demonstrated for a long time. I think you alluded to it, especially in the amine space. And it's really identifying those critical differences of taking that technology from, say, hydrogen purification for a PSA and what are the challenges that are operating in a c o two PSA space, or I'm using cryogenic fractionation to liquefy the c o two. What are some of the constituents that could be limiting in that technology?

Nate Lozanoski: 09:08

We see all the technologies that that we have available as t r l nine because they've been demonstrated in other industries. But, typically, when you go to gather funding from somebody such as a government, right, they want you to critically identify those changes. And what are your mitigation plans? And how do you engineer solutions, whether it's on the pretreatment coming into the unit, or how do you engineer solutions within the cryogenic unit to, say, handle NOx per se. Right?

Nate Lozanoski: 09:34

And I think the other thing that when it comes to technology readiness levels and and deploying these technologies is you're putting all this capital and expenditure just to capture c o two. The other thing they typically look for is how can you mitigate those other hazardous pollutants that are coming out of the stack today and also find a way to neutralize and and prevent them from entering the atmosphere as well.

David Bizley: 09:55

Thank you. So, Bertrand, I'd direct the same question to you. Where are we on the the path to net zero?

Burcin Temel Mckenna: 10:02

Considering twenty fifty goals, I think we are on a very good track. Technology development takes time, of course. You can't just bring something in a year to the market. And even if you would do that, you wouldn't be able to find anyone willing to be that the first first, demonstrator on that. There are a lot of funding opportunities for the new technologies development, and I think those are really good initiatives.

Burcin Temel Mckenna: 10:28

Like, in US, DOE has a lot of scale up funding. And also in Europe, EU Innovation Fund cares about the innovativeness, the degree of that in applications. And there are a lot of startup companies coming into the play. So all of these will, of course, eventually contribute to the decrease in the costs by the time we reach to that point. But we also need to see the willingness from the emitters to be able to go ahead and test and understand what it looks like.

Burcin Temel Mckenna: 11:04

It's very easy to put a slipstream application on a plant that will not necessarily disturb how the plant operates, but you'll be able to get so much information and knowledge out of those tests.

David Bizley: 11:19

K. Thank you. And, Paul, you, briefly touched on some of the, ways in which you're looking at dealing with carbon capture in the future. So could you outline a bit more, what are your plans for carbon capture?

Paul Monaghan: 11:32

Yeah. Well, I suppose it's it's one of the pathways that we've identified, to decarbonize even for interim targets by by 2030. So what I would like to see us doing is capture probably somewhere between maybe 50 to 60,000 tons, but to do that in an innovative way. And I think that's important too as well because we find, if you want to say, those funding opportunities to help derisk some of the projects and some of your decisions are available if you work with other in the innovative start ups, OEM suppliers, and so on like that. So, I mean, we have looked at you know, you talk about carbon capture technologies, and we've heard about, obviously, the most mature, which is the amine one.

Paul Monaghan: 12:15

We're also looking at maybe what's coming behind that, and we've looked at some of the non amine options. We've looked at some of the MOF technologies. Some people that are associated with the GCCA and the Inovandae projects, r and d project that they have there too as well. So I suppose we're very much in the kinda exploration kind of phase. Certainly, we do see opportunities and things with a reasonably good TRL level, particularly around the mineral carbonization and what to do with the actual the flu dust on the bypass from a cement factory too as well.

Paul Monaghan: 12:48

And I think the the curing and the mineral carbonization will be early opportunities in the near years, even over the next few years. And I I'd hope maybe we we'd maybe have something to report back. David, I'll add that to to as well. Yeah. And I think that's just really important for us to just really learn, allow the technology to to mature until we have to do the really scale up big carbon capture projects at scale from the sluice stack when you're capturing hundreds of thousands of tons and looking then.

Paul Monaghan: 13:20

And of course, once you capture the carbon, of course, it's you captured, you have to do something with it. So So what are you going to do with it? So if all the carbon was captured from cement factories in Europe, nevermind the world. You really wouldn't have anywhere to put it today. That whole market, the whole supply chain has to develop all the way along the line.

Paul Monaghan: 13:36

But again, that step by step David approach that we want to take. But I think we will be able to deliver some demonstration projects over the next few years.

David Bizley: 13:43

K. Thank you. And, Angela, you mentioned yesterday in your presentation that you were looking at carbon capture as part two of your CCL project. What are your end goals when it comes to carbon capture? What technologies are you looking at?

David Bizley: 13:55

How are you planning to take things forward?

Ângela Nunes: 13:58

Yes. And and I explained yesterday, first things first. So we need to be optimized. We get we need to get the right efficiency in terms of energy and c o two emissions, and then go into capture as a level that's what is the minimum emissions that we can get from the from cement kiln. And so that should be the level, the minimum ones.

Ângela Nunes: 14:19

No. The minimum need is because the amount of energy. There is also a carbon footprint for the capture itself. So by the end of the day, we need to analyze all this cycle, the complete cycle. So balancing all this, we are looking for the most available technologies, but keeping in mind the new ones that can make sense.

Ângela Nunes: 14:41

We are very it's a very challenged moment because you can imagine our own process. We will optimize, but there are also upcoming technologies from cement site. We heard about oxy fuel, and there are others, electrification. There are others on the table. So it's too many things on the same time.

Ângela Nunes: 15:02

Right. We need some more time to react. That's the truth. So right now, for acting, we need to optimize, get efficiency, putting ourselves at the lowest level of c o two emission. But the next step, we still need sometimes to figure out the best way for each plant.

Ângela Nunes: 15:23

Because as we said before, you may have a plant with some infrastructure that will will use, some available mines or whatever, but you have other plants where this is not the best option, and you should study all this together. So we need some time for that because it's too much things happen very quickly. And that question mark that I I told before, it's still also on the table. So it's important for us to have a little bit more some time, but we are really aware that and according our road map, you've seen that it's really needed, CaptainCapture. No way to to avoid it.

Ângela Nunes: 16:08

That's clear. Then what to do with the c o two? It's another thing. If you have the infrastructure, maybe it's easy for you just to store it. But if you don't, maybe you need to think on utilization.

Ângela Nunes: 16:21

And so all these projects in our value chain on concrete, carbonation, and so on may be also very useful. So we are looking to all of these opportunities and balancing them. And for that, we need this time, as I mentioned before. So

Paul Monaghan: 16:38

Right. Like, you I would say we completely agree with that. If you're a cement manufacturer, you have to do what's in front of you. So the main priority is the fuel switching. It's substituting out the the the fossil fuels to decarbonize, so it's taking out really that that one third.

Paul Monaghan: 16:50

And and I suppose that people in the audience will realize that too as well, is that when you're decarbonizing the cement manufacturing process too as well, is what's gonna be that that that thing at the end. So if you use alternative fuels that are locally sourced, whether it's SRF or RDF or whatever it is, it's very hard to displace that last piece of fossil fuel. It's very hard, so you need something else. So it's that oxy fueling? Is this is it is it green hydrogen?

Paul Monaghan: 17:16

Is it biomass? Is it is it some combination of that? So so that's a puzzle that needs to be solved maybe before then and allow the time for the for the supply chain to become in place for large scale carbon capture because we cannot do everything by 2030, but we can certainly start the journey.

David Bizley: 17:35

And thank you. Now, obviously, the topic of the issues around storage specifically of carbon. So, Nate, I wonder if you had any thoughts on how we solve some of the challenges around storing the carbon that we've captured.

Nate Lozanoski: 17:48

Yeah. So, I mean, you touched on it. Right? There's starting with mineralization, which is a pretty good option for the cement industry because you're gonna make more product and utilize your c o two, and it's a really elegant solution in that sense. From a storage perspective, at least in The United States, the EPA issued their first classic well permit in over ten years for a project we're supporting in blue ammonia.

Nate Lozanoski: 18:08

It's a good indication in The US that, listen, they realize that the permitting process needs to be revamped, and they're working on accelerating it. The same thing in Europe. They realize that permitting and infrastructure is a challenge to seeing these projects move forward. You can study the technologies all you want, but without a place to put the CO two for the most part, projects might come to a stall. The next question obviously comes utilization.

Nate Lozanoski: 18:30

Where can I store it in a utilized manner? We think about CO two as being a more or less completely spent molecule. Right? And so anything you're doing today, you're putting more energy back into it to make it into a useful molecule. And until you have excess green energy in order to do something like that, on a life cycle basis, you're actually doing worse for the environment by putting all that energy to convert the c o two molecule to something.

Nate Lozanoski: 18:56

We do offer, you know, methanol to SAF, and that's something the EU, you know, is mandating. And the EU, the red two guidelines are coming into place on when you can use, let's call it post combustion emissions for those sort of things. But I think, yeah, it's it's certainly an industry challenge, but I think governments are realizing the permitting process for storage. And and we at Honeywell are also continuing to innovate ways that we can take c o two and make it usable again, whether it's dry reforming, more efficient methanol process, things like that to to be able to find another home for c o two where there isn't the infrastructure today.

David Bizley: 19:29

Okay. Thank you. And, Bertrand as well, are you seeing any other novel and innovative solutions come up for tackling the issues of storage and utilization as well?

Burcin Temel Mckenna: 19:42

I I think, you know, mineralization is probably the most innovative case, here. Although, it's it's very limited amount of c o two. You can also convert at a cement plant to minerals. So if you have the capture and converting, let's say, 10 to 20% of it to products, what are you gonna do still with the remaining 80% of the CO two? Depending on the portion of biogenic CO two you have in that mixture, of course, there are new markets opening currently.

Burcin Temel Mckenna: 20:18

If you're able to store that, then you'll be able to also trade the credits in the global markets, and that's one of the future revenue streams for emitters. In terms of infrastructure, storage and transport, there are only two options available for transport, I would say. And, of course, the plants that are close to a harbor or port are at a very advantageous, location. Maybe they can build their short pipeline to the harbor or or create some kind of trucking scheme, logistics arrangement. But the ones that are inland, they are really depending on the railroad transport.

Burcin Temel Mckenna: 21:01

Yeah. And those also are going ahead still with the project development because then they can make their own railway connection to a trunk line that is already existing. And that's that's also the sustainable way of moving the CO two. Pipelines, of course, are the probably best investments in this case. But utilization, I think we need to consider what is the impact of utilization in the big picture.

Burcin Temel Mckenna: 21:32

And on that, I would say there are only probably two utilization cases that make sense. One is going for the methanol synthesis where it can be used as a maritime shipping fuel, and the other one is the aviation fuel. Because especially for the aviation case, there is no other alternative available, and we will need that c o two to be utilized, for that one. But other cases like making plastics from c o two and things like that, I I think we really need to question, is it worse?

Nate Lozanoski: 22:08

Yeah. The life cycle analysis sort of Yeah. Of the whole process. Okay.

David Bizley: 22:15

Okay. Well, that's all we have time for in this inaugural episode of the World Cement podcast. To hear the rest of our closing panel discussion from Envirotech twenty twenty four, make sure to check out episode two. Goodbye for now. Hello everyone, I just wanted to take a moment to remind you to register for World Cement.

David Bizley: 22:42

It's free of charge and gives you access to the latest issues of World Cement. Simply head over to worldcement.com, click the magazine tab and register today.