Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) has won awards from the USA’s R&D Magazine, which celebrate the Institute’s eco-innovations, including ‘High Efficiency Calcium Looping Technology (HECLOT)’ and the ‘In-Line Compact Thermal Analyzer’. ITRI has been recognised for its technological achievements every year since 2008.
Of particular interest to the cement industry is HECLOT, which is being trialled at Taiwan Cement Corp’s Ho-Ping Cement Plant in Hualien. According to the ITRI website, the system captures one tonne of carbon hourly and uses the CO2 to cultivate microalgae, which can then be converted into biofuel or algae products. Taiwan Cement is building the world’s largest calcium looping pilot plant, which can reduce energy consumption via a cycling of calcination and carbonation methods used to capture CO2, which, ITRI says, ultimately enables coal-fired power generation to become clean electricity.
Adapted from press release by Katherine Guenioui