Materials
Projects Targeting Concrete Embodied Carbon Win Federal Grants
US Energy Dept. officials selected Mainspring Energy for an $87-million grant, the largest of the funding round, to boost its plan to build a plant that will produce linear generators outside Pittsburgh.
Photo courtesy Mainspring Energy
Three startups focused on lowering embodied carbon in concrete are among recipients of 14 federal grants totaling $428 million, the U.S. Energy Dept. announced Oct. 22. The agency's Advanced Energy Manufacturing and Recycling grants are aimed to help the companies build manufacturing facilities.
Terra CO2, which plans to produce supplementary cementitious material that it says can displace much of the portland cement in concrete, will put its $52.6-million grant toward building a plant in Magna, Utah, on the site of Rio Tinto Group’s massive Kennecott copper mine southwest of Salt Lake City. Terra would use mine tailings as feedstock for the plant to produce 240,000 tons of the material per year for the local market.
The company works largely with nonmetallic rocks in the silicate family, CEO Bill Yearsley says, noting that the scalability of its raw material is what sets Terra CO2 apart. The material has less embodied carbon than limestone—Terra says every ton of portland cement its supplementary cementitious material replaces will reduce carbon dioxide by 70%—but it is still widely available, like limestone. The company is also in the permitting process for its first plant in Texas.
“You’ve got to be able to source your raw material locally in every market, and you’ve got to be able to source it in huge volumes,” he says.
In Chicago, Furno Materials plans to use a $20-million Energy Dept. grant to build a facility that will produce 55,000 tons of cement per year primarily from recycled concrete. The new plant is beside an existing one owned by Ozinga Bros. Inc., with which it is partnering.
Furno uses modular technology that mostly fits in a shipping container, says Kiersten Jakobsen, who heads operations, communications and marketing. The firm created a proprietary kiln design that is not horizontal like traditional rotary kilns. Its uses gaseous fuels instead of coal and coke, with technology that reduces the amount of fuel required while also being able to pack material more densely inside the kiln while producing ordinary portland cement.
This would be Furno’s first commercial site, although it has already produced units at its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters. After finalizing details with the Energy Dept., Jakobsen says construction could be done within nine months, and the company sees its plants as something that can be deployed relatively easily to other markets in the future.
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“Our philosophy has been to go with a modular approach, so we are able to go where demand exists,” Jakobsen says.
Urban Mining Industries, which makes a ground glass pozzolan called Pozzotive, plans to build manufacturing plants in Baltimore and Indiantown, Fla., using a $37.1-million federal grant. Pozzotive, which is made from recycled glass, can replace as much as 50% of cement in concrete with just 6% of the carbon footprint of the cement it replaces, according to Energy Dept. officials.
The company already has a smaller plant in Connecticut, with the new facilities serving as models for expansion into other markets, says the agency
Growing Manufacturing
Funding for the Advanced Energy Manufacturing and Recycling grant program comes from the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The $750-million program is aimed at small firms moving to establish or expand manufacturing or recycling facilities involved in clean energy, low-carbon materials or reduced greenhouse gas emissions as part of White House climate goals and job creation efforts in former coal mining communities.
“The transition to America’s clean energy future is being shaped by communities filled with the valuable talent and experience that comes from powering our country for decades,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a statement.
The largest award in the funding round is $87 million to Mainspring Energy for its project to build a plant in Coraopolis, Pa., northwest of Pittsburgh. The company is working with Cincinnati-based contractor Al. Neyer LLC on the facility, which would produce 1,000 linear generators annually—enough to power 250,000 homes, according to the firm.
“By ramping up production of linear generators in Pennsylvania, Mainspring can contribute a key role in the nation’s energy transition with a proven and versatile technology for dispatchable power,” CEO Shannon Miller said in a statement.
Mainspring’s linear generators are powered with low-temperature, non-combustion reactions, so they produce near-zero nitrogen oxide emissions, and can also switch between different fuels such as biogas, natural gas, hydrogen or propane. The generators are scalable from 250 kW to more than 100 MW.
Other projects officials selected for grant awards would produce items including components for electric vehicle batteries, insulation made from recycled cardboard and electrical equipment.
