Direct Olivine Carbonation: Optimal Process Design for a Low-Emission and Cost-Efficient Cement Production

Employing mineral carbonation products as a cementitious
substitute
could reduce the cement industry’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
However, a transition toward low-emission cement requires financially
competitive cement production at standardized product specifications.
Aiming to tackle this challenge, we modeled and optimized a direct
mineral carbonation process. In detail, we embedded a mechanistic
tubular reactor model in a mineral carbonation process and imposed
product specifications based on the European cement standard in the
optimal design formulation. In the next step, we considered the business
case of blended cement consisting of ordinary Portland cement and
the mineral carbonation product that could be categorized as CEM II
in the European cement standard. We computed the minimum production
cost and GHG emissions of the produced blended cement by using Bayesian
optimization to find Pareto optimal operating conditions of the mineral
carbonation process. Our results showed that the cost of mineral carbonation
in the cement industry can be competitive while cutting the GHG emissions
by up to 54%.