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Launch HN: Heimdal (YC S21) – Carbon neutral cement

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51–60 of 227 posts

Re: Launch HN: Heimdal (YC S21) – Carbon neutral cement

#51
post #45

Did I correctly understand the idea if I summarise the product as similar to Climeworks, capturing atmospheric CO2 (indirectly through the ocean, same thing in the end), but with the difference that you can sell the resulting product as cement ingredients (plus some byproducts) rather than it being just stored away like Climeworks does? If this is (roughly) correct, what price point per ton of removed CO2 are you at…

Yeah, that's the core of it. Climeworks absorbs CO2 on their amine solid sorbent surface before releasing it by heating up the sorbent to prepare it for a new round of CO2. That CO2 then needs to be stored somewhere. I'm not familiar with the inner workings of Climeworks, but if I were there that would be what concerned me the most. I know they're testing a mineralization solutipn with Carbfix in Iceland that could be promising, but expensive. We're not at sufficient scale to offer credits to consumers. but this could be on the agenda in a few months. As for cost per tonne this depends a lot on the commercial arrangements we have in place. More meaningful is the energy consumption per tonne which is <4 MWh/ tonne. This will be reduced to 3MWh/tonne. Based on current commercial conversations we're expecting a CO2 price below $50/t for our first plant

Re: Launch HN: Heimdal (YC S21) – Carbon neutral cement

#52

Curious about the name, my immediate thought (and interest making me click in) was that it sounds Norwegian. Any connection? I really like the idea. One thing I'm curious about is what's in it for the contractors (edit: cement producers) buying from you instead of others? I get the environmental impact, but my guess is they only care if touches their bottom line. Will it be cheaper, either in raw price or because of…

Nice catch! I'm orignally from Norway. Heimdal is the norse god of foresight. Something the world needs in buckets when it comes to climate change. Our experience so far has been that the environmental angle has been sufficient to persuade. Cement companies are in a bit of a bind given the attention to their sustainability efforts. However we're pitching ourselves as a cost competitive solution. Depending on geograph…

> Nice catch! I'm orignally from Norway. Heimdal is the norse god of foresight.

I figured you guys just like Marvel movies. :)

Re: Launch HN: Heimdal (YC S21) – Carbon neutral cement

#53
post #49

I'm not sure I understand where the carbon savings comes from. The cement industry specifically needs lime, CaO. Lime is most easily obtained by burning CO2 off of limestone, CaCO3. As you point out, this is effectively "burning off" captured carbon dioxide and is bad. Where does the carbon savings come from when the ultimate destination is to just burn CO2 off and make the actual desired product, CaO? Is this proces…

Yep, exactly! The world needs CaO for cement. We have a carbon neutral process for making it. It's actually overall negative as not all carbonates we extract are usable in cement production. But as far as cement producers are concerned it's carbon neutral.

Re: Launch HN: Heimdal (YC S21) – Carbon neutral cement

#54
Very cool project!

A couple questions:

1. How does your synthetic limestone compare to natural limestone? Are there any important performance differences in terms of the material properties of the resulting concrete?

2. What are the biggest bottlenecks/obstacles in terms of scaling this to the point it could replace a significant portion of natural limestone used today?

Edit: do you have any blog posts/more information about what you're doing? I would love to share this around, but unless I'm missing it your site is very light on details.

Re: Launch HN: Heimdal (YC S21) – Carbon neutral cement

#55
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice catch! I'm orignally from Norway. Heimdal is the norse god of foresight. Something the world needs in buckets when it comes to climate change. Our experience so far has been that the environmental angle has been sufficient to persuade. Cement companies are in a bit of a bind given the attention to their sustainability efforts. However we're pitching ourselves as a cost competitive solution. Depending on geograph…

> Nice catch! I'm orignally from Norway. Heimdal is the norse god of foresight. I figured you guys just like Marvel movies. :)

They're pretty good too ;)

Re: Launch HN: Heimdal (YC S21) – Carbon neutral cement

#56
post #49

I'm not sure I understand where the carbon savings comes from. The cement industry specifically needs lime, CaO. Lime is most easily obtained by burning CO2 off of limestone, CaCO3. As you point out, this is effectively "burning off" captured carbon dioxide and is bad. Where does the carbon savings come from when the ultimate destination is to just burn CO2 off and make the actual desired product, CaO? Is this proces…

Yep, exactly! The world needs CaO for cement. We have a carbon neutral process for making it. It's actually overall negative as not all carbonates we extract are usable in cement production. But as far as cement producers are concerned it's carbon neutral.

why does removing carbonates cause the ocean to absorb more CO2, though? Calcium and magnesium oxide aren't just floating around the ocean waiting to absorb more CO2. Removing salts does not lower oceanic acidity.

Re: Launch HN: Heimdal (YC S21) – Carbon neutral cement

#57
I would love to see you success!

Do you have more technical details on your process? Did you publish anything? I try to dig more on your website but the content is rather thin (I learn more about what you are doing by reading your post here).

What are the by product? You mention cement and drinkable water, but there should be other byproduct to handle such as brime?

Re: Launch HN: Heimdal (YC S21) – Carbon neutral cement

#58
This sounds really cool, and I hope it goes well. We need to work every angle we can to address climate change, and test as many ideas as necessary to get there.

My issue with this post is the claim that you will be making the world's first carbon-neutral houses. I understand the need for strong exciting marketing language, but, surely you mean something like, first modern Western-style carbon-neutral houses.

Re: Launch HN: Heimdal (YC S21) – Carbon neutral cement

#60

How many orders of magnitude separate your current cost per ton of limestone from the popular status quo methods? You're talking about ancillary products and regulatory credits, which is a fine business model; but I'm asking about the core industrial process. Trying to get a sense of how much more efficient your scale-up needs to be, before your process is in the black.

Our current cost per tonne is in the same order of magnitude when including the carbon value from the European ETS. The key success criteria for making large plants profitable will be connecting to cheap electricity at <$50/MWh we're in the black

Will you be able to complete on cost without carbon credits, at scale?
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