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Tag: United Kindgom

Plans for North Wales carbon capture cement works take step forward

Posted on by dishanth
Plans for North Wales carbon capture cement works take step forward

Cement manufacturer Hanson aims to deploy CCS system capable of capturing 800,000 tonnes a year of CO2
Hanson’s plan to develop a carbon capture and storage (CCS) system at its Padeswood cement works in North Wales have taken a major step forward, with the manufacturer awarding Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Engineering a preliminary design contract for the industry-leading project.

The company, which is the UK-arm of global cement giant Heidelberg Materials, is planning to develop a CCS system capable of capturing 800,000 tonnes per year of CO2 from the Flintshire cement factory, with a view to having the system up and running from 2027.

The captured CO2 would be transported and stored under the seabed in spent gas fields off the coast of Northwest England, according to Hanson, which claims the project would constitute the UK cement industry’s first adoption of CCS technology.

As part of the project, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) Engineering – part of global conglomerate the MHI Group – was last week handed a preliminary front end engineering design contract for the CCS system, which is set to use technology developed in Japan alongside the Kansai Electric Power Company.

It marks MHI’s third CO2 capture project involving a cement plant, with the firm having previously worked on a CCS feasibility study for Lehigh Cement Company in Alberta, Canada, and a CO2 capture demonstration testing program currently underway on behalf of the Tokuyama Corporation in Japan, it said.

Decarbonising the global cement and concrete sector is a crucial hurdle on the pathway to net zero emissions, as the sector is one of the world’s biggest sources of CO2, accounting for up to eight per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

As such, a host of researchers and developers are increasingly focused on developing solutions that can deliver greener concrete and cement.

In releated new, academics from Teesside University last week announced they are collaborating with industry partners on a £7.6m project to develop low carbon cement made from by-products from the steel and chemical industries.

The scientists and developers behind the building material, which they call ‘Mevocrete’, claim it can result in up to 85 per cent less carbon dioxide compared to traditional concrete made from Ordinary Portland Cement, the production of which remains a highly energy-intensive process.

The new approach harnesses a “revolutionary” construction material made using waste steel slag patented by Middlesbrough-based company Material Evolution, Teesside University said, following the award of government funding from Innovate UK to work with Material Evolution on the project.

The new project aims to scale up the technology to create a full-scale facility for cement production using waste steel slag at Teessworks.

The University’s project lead, Dr Sina Rezaei Gomari, said: “For the UK to meet its net zero targets it is imperative that new ways to decarbonise the construction industry are found, and this project has the potential to have a major impact in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”

 

 

 

 

Source BusinessGreen

Crab and lobster shells could be used to make renewable batteries

Posted on by dishanth
Crab and lobster shells could be used to make renewable batteries

Scientists want to use a chemical found in crab and lobster shells to make batteries more sustainable, according to research.

“We think both biodegradability of material, or environmental impact, and the performance of the batteries are important for a product, which has the potential to be commercialised,” said Liangbing Hu, the director of the University of Maryland’s Center for Materials Innovation and lead author of the paper, published in the journal Matter.

As the world transitions towards deploying green energy solutions and electric vehicles, the batteries being used for such technology also need to be eco-friendly.

But the chemicals used in conventional batteries such as lithium-ion can take hundreds or thousands of years to break down. These chemicals are also often corrosive and flammable. In some cases consumer-gadget batteries have caught fire on aircrafts, or caused fires in waste and recycling sites.

The researchers in Maryland have developed batteries that use a product derived from crustacean shells to store energy.

 

Crustaceans such as crabs, shrimps and lobsters have exoskeletons made of cells that contain chitin, a polysaccharide that makes their shells hard and resistant. Photograph: Eric Risberg/AP

 

Crustaceans such as crabs, shrimps and lobsters have exoskeletons made of cells that contain chitin, a kind of polysaccharide that makes their shells hard and resistant. This valuable material is abundant in nature and can also be found in fungi and insects, but is usually thrown away as food waste from restaurants and a byproduct of the food industry. Scientists have long been researching its various applications – in biomedical engineering, for example, for wound dressing as well as anti-inflammatory treatments – and now, electrical engineering.

Through chemical processing and adding acetic acid aqueous solution, chitin can ultimately be synthesized into a firm gel membrane and used as an electrolyte for a battery. An electrolyte is the liquid, paste, or gel inside a battery that helps ions – charged molecules – travel between one end and the other of a battery, allowing it to store energy.

By combining this chitosan electrolyte with zinc, a naturally occurring metal increasingly used to make batteries that are cheap and safe, Hu’s team was able to create a renewable battery.

The battery is 99.7% energy efficient even after 1,000 battery cycles, which is about 400 hours. This means they can be quickly charged and discharged without significantly affecting their performance. “It is not an easy thing for batteries to operate at high current density. The displayed performance suggests the merit of chitosan-based material in this work,” said Hu.

 

The batteries are not flammable and the two-thirds of the battery made of chitosan can break down in soil thanks to microbial degradation in just five months, leaving behind recyclable zinc. Antonio J Fernández Romero, a professor of material sciences for energy production at the University of Cartagena in Spain, who was not involved in the study, said these were “outstanding properties”.

He said: “The design of new batteries that are respectful of the environment, cheap and producing high discharge capacity, is one of the more important items that must be developed in the coming years.” He added that biodegradability was key, and at this level the system seemed to work very well but it would have to be tested on a larger scale and under commercial use conditions.

The design may pave the way for developing high-performance and sustainable batteries for green energy storage, according to Hu and the study authors.

“When you develop new materials for battery technologies there tends to be a significant gap between promising lab results and a demonstrable and scalable technology,” said Graham Newton, a professor of materials chemistry at the University of Nottingham, who was not involved in the study. He is an expert in sustainable batteries and researches how they can be improved.

So far, according to Newton, the chitosan-zinc battery results are promising. “There are some examples of batteries like this that have been commercialized and are being trialed as stationary energy storage systems,” said Newton. “There are still quite a few challenges to be met in the development of zinc ion batteries, but fundamental studies such as this are hugely important.”

 

 

Source  The Guardian News

Siemens to deliver carbon neutral factory eight years ahead of schedule

Posted on by dishanth
Siemens to deliver carbon neutral factory eight years ahead of schedule

Siemens’ Congleton factory manufactures more than 1.2 million controls and drives each year and has been fitted with an array of energy efficiency and low-carbon solutions.

With support from Siemens’ energy and performance services business, Smart Infrastructure, the Congleton factory now generates 75kw of renewable energy through a hydro-electric plant at Havannah Weir on the river Dane. The facility also uses certified carbon-neutral biogas to power onsite engines. A building management system, modern windows and LED lighting have also been fitted to reduce total energy costs by up to 30% respectively.

Siemens believes the facility, which also has EV charging for staff and visitors and is aiming for zero waste to landfill, will become carbon neutral this year. Siemens’ original 2015 commitment was to ensure carbon neutral operations by 2030.

Andrew Peters, Managing Director of Siemens Digital Industries Congleton, said: “Siemens believes that sustainability is a force for good and can deliver value for all its stakeholders. We want to help customers achieve sustainable growth and to transform their industries through decarbonisation. The first step of that is for us to achieve these ambitions in our own operations.

 

Siemens’ original 2015 commitment was to ensure carbon neutral operations by 2030.

 

“I am delighted that by leveraging a culture of continuous improvement and sustainability – the vital components to Siemens’ Congleton’s long-term success – we have achieved carbon neutrality, a major milestone in our ambitions to reach net zero emissions by 2030.”

The company claims that energy efficiency measures have saved around £250,000 annually at time when energy costs are rising quickly.

After setting its carbon neutrality goal in 2015, Siemens began tying executive-level pay to progress against key sustainability targets, including its 2030 GHG goal, at the advice of the board.

It has since joined Amazon’s Climate Pledge and vowed to reach net-zero carbon by 2040.

Amazon’s ‘Climate Pledge’ was launched in September 2019, after the e-commerce giant faced mounting pressure from consumers, investors and its own staff to firm up its environmental ambitions and actions in line with its scale. It worked with non-profit Global Optimism, the brainchild of former UN climate secretary Christiana Figures, to develop the pledge, which is headlined by a 2040 net-zero target, and to open it up to additional businesses.

The company has recently joined the SteelZero initiative. Convened by The Climate Group, which is perhaps best known for its RE100 and EV100 initiatives, SteelZero represents businesses from all parts of the steel value chain. By signing up to SteelZero, companies commit to procuring, specifying, stocking, or producing 100% net-zero steel across all operations by 2050 at the latest.

 

 

Source Edie

Paybacks from UK renewables could cut £27 from bills by end of winter

Posted on by dishanth
Paybacks from UK renewables could cut £27 from bills by end of winter

Britain’s wind and solar farms could help to reduce households’ energy bills by paying back almost £800m to consumers by the end of the winter after gas and electricity market prices rocketed above their set subsidy levels.

Households earned a £157m windfall from renewable energy generators for the first time in the final quarter of last year following record high market prices, according to official figures.

The body responsible for managing renewable energy payments, the Low Carbon Contracts Company (LCCC), has forecast paybacks from the industry could increase to a total of £770m by the end of winter, shaving an average of £27 from the annual home energy bill.

But customers might have been in line for multibillion pound paybacks worth about £140 for a typical annual energy bill if the UK’s renewable energy rollout had taken place sooner, according to the industry.

The UK government is due to announce the results of its biggest every renewable energy subsidy auction this spring. This will support up to 12 gigawatts of clean energy capacity by allowing onshore wind and solar projects to compete for a subsidy for the first time since 2015.

Renewable energy projects typically receive payments from household energy bills to top up the earnings from the energy market to an agreed level, or “strike price”, But in return they are expected to pay cash back to consumers when market prices outstrip the set subsidy level.

This system helps to protect households from surging market prices, which are expected cause bills to soar from an average of £1,277 this winter to £1,925 from 1 April, while providing renewable energy investors with certainty too, the LCCC said.

Based on the official figures from the last quarter, the UK’s pipeline of renewable energy projects, which are expected to be under construction until 2023, could have saved households £3.9bn if they were operating this winter, according to analysis by SSE.

The company claims that its Dogger Bank windfarm, under construction in the North Sea and featuring the world’s largest wind turbines, would have saved UK homes almost £1.9bn in total this winter, or the equivalent of more than £67 per household.

The analysis does not include the savings from avoiding the use of gas power plants, which have become “eye-wateringly expensive” after record-high gas market prices, or the cost of integrating renewable energy into the UK’s electricity system.

Dan McGrail, the chief executive of RenewableUK, an industry trade group, said: “The answer to an energy crisis caused by soaring gas prices is to encourage investment in low-cost renewables to decrease our reliance on eye-wateringly expensive fossil fuels.

“The escape route from volatile and uncontrollable gas prices couldn’t be clearer – investing in our green future secures low-cost reliable power as well as getting the UK to net zero as fast as possible.”

Alistair Phillips-Davies, the chief executive of SSE, added: “By building more of our own clean energy infrastructure here in Britain and, critically, investing strategically in the network infrastructure to connect it all, we can protect ourselves from the next energy crisis.”

 

 

Source The Guardian

Airships for city hops could cut flying’s CO2 emissions by 90%

Posted on by dishanth
Airships for city hops could cut flying’s CO2 emissions by 90%

For those fancying a trip from Liverpool to Belfast or Barcelona to the Balearic Islands but concerned about the carbon footprint of aeroplane travel, a small Bedford-based company is promising a surprising solution: commercial airships.

Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV), which has developed a new environmentally friendly airship 84 years after the Hindenburg disaster, on Wednesday named a string of routes it hoped to serve from 2025.

The routes for the 100-passenger Airlander 10 airship include Barcelona to Palma de Mallorca in four and a half hours. The company said the journey by airship would take roughly the same time as aeroplane travel once getting to and from the airport was taken into account, but would generate a much smaller carbon footprint. HAV said the CO2 footprint per passenger on its airship would be about 4.5kg, compared with about 53kg via jet plane.

 

Other routes planned include Liverpool to Belfast, which would take five hours and 20 minutes; Oslo to Stockholm, in six and a half hours; and Seattle to Vancouver in just over four hours.

HAV, which has in the past attracted funding from Peter Hambro, a founder of Russian gold-miner Petropavlovsk, and Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson, said its aircraft was “ideally suited to inter-city mobility applications like Liverpool to Belfast and Seattle to Vancouver, which Airlander can service with a tiny fraction of the emissions of current air options”.

Tom Grundy, HAV’s chief executive, who compares the Airlander to a “fast ferry”, said: “This isn’t a luxury product it’s a practical solution to challenges posed by the climate crisis.”

He said that 47% of regional aeroplane flights connect cities that are less than 230 miles (370km) apart, and emit a huge about of carbon dioxide doing so.

“We’ve got aircraft designed to travel very long distances going very short distances, when there is actually a better solution,” Grundy said. “How much longer will we expect to have the luxury of travelling these short distances with such a big carbon footprint?”

Grundy said the hybrid-electric Airlander 10 could make the same connections with 10% of the carbon footprint from 2025, and with even smaller emissions in the future when the airships were expected to be all-electric powered.

“It’s an early and quick win for the climate,” he said. “Especially when you use this to get over an obstacle like water or hills.”

HAV said it was in discussions with a number of airlines to operate the routes, and expected to announce partnerships and airline customers in the next few months. The company has already signed a deal to deliver an airship to luxury Swedish travel firm OceanSky Cruises, which has said it intends to use the craft to offer “experiential travel” over the North Pole with Arctic explorer Robert Swan.

 

 

Grundy said the company was in the final stages of settling on a location for its airship production line, which he hoped would be in the UK. He said the company would hire about 500 people directly involved in building the craft, and it would support a further 1,500 jobs in the supply chain. The company currently employs about 70 people, mostly in design, at its offices in Bedford. He said the company aimed to produce about 12 airships a year from 2025.

The craft was originally designed as a surveillance vehicle for intelligence missions in Afghanistan. HAV claims independent estimates put the value of the airship market at $50bn over the next 20 years. It aims to sell 265 of its Airlander craft over that period.

The £25m Airlander 10 prototype undertook six test flights, some of which ended badly. It crashed in 2016 on its second test flight, after a successful 30-minute maiden trip. HAV tweeted at the time: “Airlander sustained damage on landing during today’s flight. No damage was sustained mid-air or as a result of a telegraph pole as reported.”

The aircraft, which can take off and land from almost any flat surface, reached heights of 7,000ft (2,100m) and speeds of up to 50 knots (57mph) during its final tests. The company has had UK government backing and grants from the European Union.

 

 

Source The Guardian

L’Oreal launches make-up recycling across UK shops

Posted on by dishanth
L’Oreal launches make-up recycling across UK shops

Its Maybelline brand and recycling firm TerraCycle will install the recycling points in branches of Tesco, Boots, Sainsbury’s and Superdrug.

L’Oreal’s UK boss said the firm wants to “lead the way” in creating beauty recycling habits.

But Greenpeace said without reducing single-use plastic production, firms “cannot claim they are doing enough”.

From Thursday, consumers can drop off empty make-up products from any brand at the recycling bins in participating Tesco and Superdrug stores, which can be found online.

Boots and Sainsbury’s will follow at the end of September.

Compacts, eyeshadow palettes, foundation or concealer tubes, mascara, eyeliner and lip products will be accepted, although make-up brushes, nail polish and aerosols will not.

The used items will be collected from the shops, sorted, cleaned and recycled into plastic pellets, which can be used to make other products, such as outdoor furniture.

Chains such as The Body Shop and skincare specialist Kiehl’s – also owned by L’Oreal – already offer customers rewards for returning empty products to stores to be recycled.

Vismay Sharma, country manager of L’Oreal UK and Ireland, told the BBC that the firm had the “ability to make impact at real scale”.

Nearly half of make-up wearers did not know that recycling beauty products was possible, according to a recent survey of more than 1,000 consumers by Maybelline.

Asked what differentiates Maybelline and TerraCycle’s new “Make-up Not Make Waste” scheme from other similar ones, Stephen Clarke, head of communications at TerraCycle, said that the number of stores participating meant it would be easier for consumers to recycle their beauty buys.

He also said the firm can recycle mixed materials, such as compacts with mirrors, as well as beauty items with pumps and triggers, which local councils won’t necessarily do.

 

‘Damaging our planet’

However, environmental campaign group Greenpeace said that “recycling will only ever get us so far”.

Will McCallum, head of oceans at Greenpeace UK, said: “Given the almost daily torrent of research revealing the extent to which plastic pollution is damaging our planet, it’s frustrating to see a major plastic producer like the make-up industry fail to commit to reduce its overall plastic footprint.

“Without action plans to move towards reusable packaging and reduce single-use plastic production, companies cannot claim they are doing enough.”

More than 120 billion units of packaging are produced globally every year by the cosmetics industry alone, according to the Zero Waste Week campaign.

L’Oreal told the BBC that its global consumption of plastic totalled 137,000 tonnes in 2019.

The cosmetics firm has pledged that 100% of its plastic packaging will be refillable, reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025.

Mr Sharma also said that the firm was dedicating €50m (£45.4m) to investing in recycling or plastic waste-related projects.

 

 

By Lora Jones Business reporter, BBC News

Source: BBC