Vicat: a cement manufacturer involved in hydrogen

The Vicat Group is a cement manufacturer employing 9,500 people worldwide and generating sales in excess of €3 billion. It is developing several solutions to reduce its carbon footprint, as the cement industry accounts for 7 to 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Vicat Group history

The history of the Vicat group is nothing less than the legacy of one of the most important inventors of modern cement: Louis Vicat. While building a bridge in Souillac, Dordogne, Vicat studied hydraulic binder compositions and published his theory of hydraulicity in 1818. He thus laid the foundations of modern cement, although he did not patent it, as he wanted his discovery to benefit as many people as possible. It was his son, Joseph Vicat, who founded the company in 1853 (which did not take the name Vicat & Cie until 1867).

Until the 1970s, the company was purely national.

In 1974, the company bought a cement plant in the United States, then accelerated its international expansion from 1987 onwards (US, Turkey, Senegal, etc.). Today, the group not only offers cement, but also concrete (= a ready-to-use material), aggregates and a number of ancillary activities (“transport, bag manufacture, paper production, building chemistry and finishing products”). Above all, they have developed low-carbon solutions, which we’ll be talking about shortly.

According to their documents, by 2021, the group had, among others:

• 16 cement plants and 72 aggregates quarries
• sold 28 million tonnes of cement in 2021, 10 million m3 of concrete and 24 million tonnes of aggregates
• generated sales of 3.123 billion euros and employed nearly 9,500 people.

Vicat and the environment

The cement industry is oneof the most polluting industrial sectors, accounting for 7 to 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions. In addition to the phenomenal quantities of rock that have to be extracted and transported, the transformation of rock into clinker (the basic ingredient of cement) produces enormous quantities of CO2: on the one hand, the stone has to be heated to very high temperatures, and on the other, the carbon it contains has to be released. In all, for the production of one tonne of clincker, 330 kg of CO2 are generated for heat production and 535 kg of CO2 for the chemical reaction alone.

The Vicat Group has announced that it is working to reduce its carbon footprint and is said to have invested 23 million euros in its decarbonization projects in 2019 and 52 million in 2020. (Business report 2020) It appears to be working on several avenues: new formulations, the use of alternative fuels and, more generally, the mobilization of synergies between cement decarbonization and hydrogen.

New formulations

Vicat has developed cement formulations that would be eco-responsible. This would be the case with its Naturat range, “composed of natural pozzolans from the Auvergne volcanoes”.

They have also developed a range of“DECA” concrete. DECA1 would have a carbon footprint reduced by 10-20%, and DECA2 by >20%. Added to this would be “Oxygène” trucks (= trucks with a rotating cylinder where concrete is mixed), running on liquefied biomethane (and electricity?).

Using alternative fuels

One of the avenues already explored by the cement industry is the use of alternative fuels to produce clinker. You’re going to have waste or biomass. As far as waste is concerned, I’m not sure about the positive ecological impact (to be verified, but Vicat’s press release suggests that there are no savings in emissions). Vicat announces that the share of biomass used in 2020 avoided the emission of 685,000 tonnes of CO2. (Business report 2020)

One possibility would be to use hydrogen as an alternative fuel. The flame characteristics of gas are difficult to reproduce with biomass or waste. This could be achieved by combining them with hydrogen. This is one way of producing low-carbon cement.

Hydrogen production and cement plants

Another synergy between hydrogen and cement plants lies in the use of the heat produced by the process to power certainelectrolysis processes operating at high temperatures.

Vicat is one of the founding partners of Genvia, the French company developing reversible high-temperature electrolyzers. With an efficiency of over 95% and the possibility of acting as a fuel cell, this would make it viable to use hydrogen as a means of stabilizing electricity supplies. The link with the cement plant is that these electrolyzers need heat to operate and could reuse the waste heat produced by cement production.

Hynovi: carbon capture and methanol production

The Hynovi project would capture 40% of the CO2 emitted by a cement plant (in Isère) and combine it with hydrogen produced by a 330MW electrolyzer (supplied by EDF subsidiary Hynamics) to produce 200,000 tonnes of methanol. This would avoid the emission of around 500,000 tonnes of CO2/year. It’s a great project, mobilizing both the synergies between hydrogen and cement production (heat cogeneration) and betweenhydrogen and CO2. This avoids the problems of transporting and storing dihydrogen caused by the physical characteristics of the tiny molecule.

Unfortunately, it seems to be at an early stage:

As part of the “Projet Important d’Intérêt Européen Commun (PIIEC/IPCEI)” call for projects, Hynovi has been pre-notified by the French government and is currently being examined by the European Commission.

Vicat, September 9, 2021

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