The TecEco Tec-Kiln

If lime and magnesia were made without releases and much less energy then the production and use of major building materials such as cement would be much more sustainable

The Tec-Kiln has been designed for low temperature calcination of alkali metal carbonates and the pyro processing and simultaneous grinding of other minerals such as clays with the above objective in mind.

Hydraulic cements including binders TecEco invented can be made without releases and with much less energy and therefore at lower cost and TecEco are looking for funds to build the first prototype of the kiln.

Roman cements were made from lime and pozzolana (a volcanic ash containing significant quantities of SiO2 and Al2O3) or lime and ground brick and tiles. Learning from them it is possible to split the manufacture of Portland cement into the making of lime and the manufacture of clinker. In this way a lower, more precise amount of non fossil fuel energy can be untilised in a closed system that does not allow releases and much more consistent quality cements produced.

TecEco have demonstrated that reactive magnesia [1] is destined to become a major componenet of hydraulic and hydraulic/carbonating binders of the future and the diagram below depicts the role of the Tec-Kiln for the calcination of magnesite in the thermodynamic cycle of mangesium

Cement made without chemical releases has huge market potential as it represents a solution to the CO2 in the air problem without legacies that is potentially profitable and thus politically acceptable.

In the simplistic representation of the magnesium thermodynamic cycle shown below the TecEco kiln provides de carbonation of MgCO3.

Summary

The TecEco Tec-Kiln is an essential part of TecEco's grand plan to sequester massive amounts of CO2 as man made carbonate in the built environment and has the following features:


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[1] Reactive magnesia is also variously known as caustic calcined magnesia, caustic magnesia or CCM. We prefer to define reactive as magnesia with low lattice energy, however lattice energy is not possible to directly measure. It can only be calculated inidirectly. The temperature of firing has a greater influence on reactivity than grind size as excess energy goes into lattice energy. Technical information about reactive magnesia is available in the technical area of our web site.

[2] Grinding is only 98-99% efficient, nearly all the energy used ends up as heat.