Wellpad on the Menengai geothermal area, Kenya (supply: GDC)
Though small in scale, the geothermal direct-use challenge for cement manufacturing in Menengai, Kenya serves as a mannequin for industrial purposes of geothermal.
Established in 1987, Steam S.r.l. (“STEAM”) has practically 40 years of expertise in geothermal engineering and consulting. Their newest project in Kenya showcases the potential of geothermal vitality to revolutionize high-emissions industrial processes and contribute to world local weather targets.
Undertaking Background: Geothermal as a Enterprise Technique
As reported a couple of months in the past, Steam has been chosen by Karsan & Sons’ (KRSL) for his or her NDOVU NAKURU Cement challenge in Kenya’s Menengai area.
KRSL is a multi-generational household enterprise working within the mixture and cement sectors. Ndovu Cement, KRSL’s cement model, ranks seventh when it comes to market share in Kenya and has a manufacturing capability of 1200 tonnes per day. It at present has six quarries in Kenya and one cement grinding plant with two grinding mills south of Nairobi in Athi River.
The NDOVU NAKURU challenge plans to determine a second grinding plant north of Nairobi, which is able to increase KRSL’s market base and—crucially—align with its 10-year goal of utilizing renewable vitality for all new operations and services.
Past its worth as a sustainable vitality supply, KRSL selected geothermal as a result of it’s dependable. Energy outages, which aren’t unusual in Kenya, can harm the tools utilized in cement manufacturing. Even when they don’t trigger speedy harm, nevertheless, frequent chilly restarts can weigh closely on cement producers’ operational prices.
Dr. George Muia, KRSL’s Head of Vitality Investments, defined the agency’s imaginative and prescient for the Nakuru challenge, and the way it matches into its strategic plan. “Considered one of KRSL’s strategic aims is to scale back its carbon footprint by 40% in 10 years. Now we have already decreased the variety of diesel autos in our mixture quarries by over 50% and in flip launched electrical conveyor programs in two of our largest quarries. Geothermal offers us the chance to proceed pursuing our goal of reducing our carbon footprint as a lot as attainable, whereas additionally rising extra aggressive as enterprise.”
Undertaking Overview
The significance of the challenge could also be straightforward to understate. Regardless of being the world’s first direct-use geothermal challenge within the cement trade, it includes only one 4-MW ORC energy plant and one geothermal heat-powered dryer. It doesn’t have the technological fanfare related to rising applied sciences like Enhanced Geothermal Techniques (EGS) and Superior Geothermal Techniques (AGS) and pales compared to the 1 GW put in geothermal energy technology capability that Kenya is aspiring to attain very quickly.
Nonetheless, small-impact tasks like Karsan’s are important for educating each the general public and coverage makers on how progressive purposes of geothermal vitality can diversify the instruments for accelerating the vitality transition. By illustrating the shocking Use Circumstances and advantages of geothermal vitality, the Karsan challenge conjures up broader assist for such initiatives and emphasizes the position that firms working in historically hard-to-decarbonize sectors can play find options on their collective journey in the direction of a sustainable financial system.
The Karsan Undertaking in Element
The Karsan cement plant is within the Menengai steamfield, about 6 kilometers away from Geothermal Growth Firm’s (GDC) manufacturing effectively MW-18A. Karsan’s present services embrace a cement grinding manufacturing facility and mixture quarry, and the following step within the firm’s roadmap is to provide its personal pozzolanic tuffaceous ash, a a lot much less energy-intensive materials which can be utilized to scale back the quantity of clinker wanted in concrete manufacturing.
To this finish, Steam is at present constructing idea and fundamental designs for the direct utility of warmth from the geothermal brine in Karsan’s cement plant’s drying unit, the place the pozzolanic tuffaceous ash might be processed.
From effectively MW-18A, a two-phase stream is discharged and despatched to steam/brine separator. After separation, the brine might be despatched to the drying system by an aqueduct of about 150 meters by a booster pump after the separation, and the steam might be despatched to an influence plant by an approx. 100 m steam pipeline.
The precise discount in carbon emissions that Karsan will obtain by this challenge is determined by a number of components, together with the proportion of clinker that the pozzolanic tuffaceous ash will exchange within the cement manufacturing course of and the manufacturing capability of the dryer itself. Nonetheless, a latest research concluded that emissions reductions of as much as 20% may be achieved by using pozzolanic supplies in cement manufacturing.[1]
Geothermal: Industrial-grade Renewable Vitality
Cement manufacturing is chargeable for roughly 8% of worldwide carbon emissions, and that quantity is rising. Massive shoppers like China, which used extra concrete between 2011 and 2013 that the US did in all the 20th century, are driving the market’s development. Cement’s carbon intensive nature is basically because of the manufacturing of “clinker”, the substance which supplies concrete its “energy”, and which accounts for over 90% of cement’s carbon emissions.[2]
Clinker is produced primarily by heating limestone in a kiln at round 1500°C, which causes the limestone (calcium carbonate) to decompose into calcium oxide (lime) and CO2. The CO2 is then historically launched into the environment. To succeed in 1500°C, nevertheless, cement producers want sources of electrical energy which can be each sturdy and dependable. Intermittent renewables like photo voltaic and wind are sometimes too dangerous, each when it comes to their means to supply electrical “baseload” (i.e. non-intermittent) energy and when it comes to electrical capability, for cement plant homeowners to justify as low-carbon electrical energy sources.
Sometimes, cement manufacturing crops should both set up a fossil gasoline powered generator on-site or buy electrical energy off the grid, or each. However with 60% of worldwide electrical energy manufacturing nonetheless coming from fossil fuels—significantly from coal, which accounted for roughly 36% of worldwide electrical energy manufacturing in 2023[3]—selecting the non-intermittent (“baseload”) energy of geothermal is a strategic resolution for firms who’ve each the objective of constructing a sustainable enterprise and the objective of bettering their very own vitality safety.
Karsan, Menengai, GDC and the Emergence of a Kenyan Nationwide Geothermal Technique
To grasp totally the circumstances round Karsan’s means to ship this progressive challenge, its vital to grasp how the Menengai area is being developed.
The Menengai Caldera, positioned in Nakuru County, is certainly one of Kenya’s important geothermal sources with a possible capability of as much as 1.6 GW. The primary part of the Menengai challenge consists of three energy crops, every with a capability of 35 MW, offering a mixed output of 105 MW[4][5]. Considered one of these, the Sosian Menengai energy station, is one other of Steam’s Proprietor’s Engineering assignments.
At Menengai, state-owned GDC undertakes the drilling of geothermal wells with a purpose to shield potential builders from the excessive monetary dangers related to drilling. Upon reaching a productive effectively, GDC then additionally engineers the development of steam gathering programs. The steam from these programs is then offered to impartial energy producers (IPPs) who then convert the steam purely into electrical energy or who develop mixed warmth and energy tasks just like the Karsan challenge, utilizing the warmth immediately.
However Kenya, by GDC, has bigger plans in thoughts. The state envisions at Menengai a geothermal-powered industrial park which goals to make the most of each geothermal warmth and energy. This initiative consists of varied direct-use purposes of geothermal vitality resembling milk pasteurization, greenhouse heating, aquaculture, laundromats, and grain drying[6]. The commercial park is anticipated to draw quite a few companies because of the decrease energy charges and the dependable provide of geothermal steam.
As such, the Karsan challenge is without doubt one of the state-run improvement’s pilot tasks sooner or later Menengai industrial park. It additionally an vital challenge inside the scope of Kenya’s broader Imaginative and prescient 2030 improvement plan, which goals to extend electrical energy technology capability and promote renewable vitality sources. This in the end helps Kenya’s objective of lowering greenhouse gasoline emissions and making certain a sustainable and safe vitality future. Within the case of Menengai, this implies leveraging geothermal vitality to boost vitality safety, decrease electrical energy prices, and appeal to industrial investments.[7][8]
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2772397624000261
[2] https://energypost.eu/concrete-8-of-global-emissions-and-rising-which-innovations-can-achieve-net-zero-by-2050/
[3] https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/fossil-fuels-still-dominate-global-power-systems-2023-11-30/
[4] https://www.power-technology.com/tasks/menengai-geothermal-power-project-kenya/
[5] https://constructionreviewonline.com/construction-projects/menengai-geothermal-power-plant-project-in-nakuru-kenya/
[6] https://www.thinkgeoenergy.com/gdc-planning-geothermal-industrial-park-at-menengai-kenya/
[7] https://constructionreviewonline.com/construction-projects/menengai-geothermal-power-plant-project-in-nakuru-kenya/
[8] https://www.thinkgeoenergy.com/35-mw-menengai-geothermal-power-plant-kenya-starts-grid-supply/
