Hi Jack,
The Brimstone CEO Cody Finke gave a presentation to CLF late last year, it looks like a pretty great option. Their process produces OPC and SCMs from calcium silicates, which don’t appear to have any supply issues, while also producing magnesium oxide that can ‘sequester’ CO2 to form magnesium carbonates. There are two possible drawbacks that I can think of:
- They are using fossil fuels to heat their furnaces, and until renewable electricity prices come down they probably have around the same energy emissions as OPC.
- It is not clear that they can be cost competitive with OPC and SCMs, this is yet to be seen once they scale - also right now their production volumes are quite low.
Otherwise this is a potential game changer in that they have a feasible path to produce zero emissions OPC and SCMs while complying with existing concrete standards, specifications and design methodologies.