The international doctoral training network entitled "Valorization of CO2 for low carbon cement, short: CO2Valorize", was in 2022 funded in by the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Action of the European Commission.

A cohort of eight doctoral projects will investigate mineral carbonation processes for the production of carbonated supplementary cementitious materials. The carbonation process of such materials is complex and barely understood to date. Our networks aim to lay the scientific foundations to create fundamental knowledge on the mechanisms, reaction kinetics, physicochemical subprocess, and performance of the modified cement, aiming to prove that a CO2 reduction of 50 % per ton of cement is feasible.

The consortium is driven by FLSmidth, Denmark, ensuring fast industrialization of the results with the potential to commercialize new equipment, processes, and software during and after the project.

The Industrial Doctorate project hosted in collaboration by FLSmidth and NTNU is "Characterization of raw materials, carbonated components, and cementitious products." The objectives of the project are:

• To develop protocols to support the optimization of enhanced carbonation of a variety of raw materials towards their performance in cementitious systems, such as mortar and concrete.
• To improve our understanding of the reactions of enhanced carbonated materials when used in cementitious systems.

Research partners include: FLSmidth (Denmark), NTNU (Norway), University of Padova (Italy), KIT (Germany), Siemens Process Systems Engineering (UK), Innovation with Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (Germany), Technische Universität Dresden (Germany), DTU (Denmark), and CEMMAC a.s. (Slovania).

CO2Valorize runs from September 2022 to August 2026 with participation from the Concrete Group at NTNU by the PhD candidate, Klaartje De Weerdt, and Mette R. Geiker. Dr. Wilson Ricardo Leal da Silva Cement Materials Specialist at R&D at FLSmidth, will act as co-supervisor for the PhD candidate.

European commission Fact Sheet (Cordis Link)