EVEREST

The objective of the EVEREST project is to (almost) completely decarbonize Europe's largest lime plant, located in Wülfrath, Germany.  

The project would construct a completely new type of lime kiln and a large-scale industrial separation plant, which would allow CO₂ to be captured and stored, both permanently and safely. Air Liquide, a leading global industrial gas specialist with a proven technology for CO₂ capture, is the project partner for the construction and operation of the capture plant. The project plans to achieve 89% relative greenhouse gas (GHG) emission avoidance compared to the reference scenario. 

Simplified illustration of the Everest project, which aims to build state-of-the-art
lime kilns and a large-scale industrial CO₂ capture plant.

For the carbon capture aspect of the project, a CO₂ capturing unit dedicated to flue gas treatment would be connected to a combination of rotary kilns and parallel flow regenerating kilns (PFRK). Technology partner Air Liquide would build the first Cryocap™ FG unit in a lime plant at an industrial scale. The Cryocap™ technology uses cryogenic temperatures to separate gases and creates a 99.99% pure CO₂ stream needed for CO₂ transport and geological storage. Moreover, new PFRK Oxyfuel kilns would be built with a specialised technology to capture the CO₂ from these types of kilns which is already highly concentrated. This technology has the potential of wider impact in the sector, since PFRKs are the most commonly used kiln type in the lime industry worldwide.  

The project is expected to significantly raise the technology readiness level of the key technologies being used, particularly for existing kilns. The fully developed project aims to avoid, through capture and storage, absolute greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of up to 9.3 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent over the first ten years of operation. 

Everest aims to capture in sum up to 1.4 million tons of CO₂ per year. The CO₂ would be captured both on the existing kilns and the newly build PFRK with oxyfuel technology.

Together with the planned switch to lower-emission fuels a total of almost 1.6 million tons of CO₂ per year can be abated if compared to the current production method.
Compared to per capita emissions, this is roughly equivalent to the CO₂ emissions of over 220,000 people in Germany*. 

The European Union's funding scheme for the project uses a reference production plant as a theoretical benchmark. Compared to this reference production plant, the project will save 9.3 million tons of GHG over the course of 10 years.

*CO₂ per capita emissions in Germany in 2022 according to the European Commission's JRC report from 2023 (https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/)

With the EVEREST project, we are leading industrial lime production into a climate-neutral future.

The lime industry is one of the “hard-to-abate” industries, as lime production generates CO₂ from the decomposition of limestone. These so-called “process emissions” cannot be avoided by switching to zero-carbon fuels.

This first-of-its-kind project would support local and other European lime users from various industries, such as water treatment, chemicals, paper, and steel manufacturing, in their path to carbon neutrality, by providing low-carbon lime on the market. Leveraging its know-how and unique expertise in CO₂ capture technologies, Air Liquide would build and operate a unit of its innovative and proprietary Cryocap™ FG (Flue Gas)  and Cryocap™ Oxy technologies which are 100% electrical and would help to decarbonize the lime sector in Europe. 

The project would also create potential socio­ economic impact, planning to create 40 direct jobs and 500 indirect jobs. EVEREST shows a high scalability potential on existing plants both at sector level (cement and lime industry), and on an economy-wide level across sectors and across countries, tackling one key "difficult-to-abate" sector. Due to its sheer size, EVEREST would be a nucleus for the CO₂ infrastructure that is needed in Europe and would help other CO₂ emitters within and outside the lime industry to develop and establish their own CCS projects. 

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the granting authority, the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.