Cambridge Electric Cement (CEC) is a sustainable cement start-up, founded in 2022 to commercialise a sustainable cement concept from the University of Cambridge. The team has developed the world’s first process for making low carbon, recycled cement, by processing it through the same electric arc furnaces (EAFs) as those used in steel recycling. At the core of our product development is our ‘Cement 2 Zero’ (C2Z) industrial demonstrator project, a £6.5m, 2 year programme funded by Innovate UK to prove our product at industry scale. To do this, we are working with a consortium of established research and industry players that represent our whole supply chain – AtkinsRéalis, Balfour Beatty, CELSA UK, Day Group, Materials Processing Institute, Tarmac and the University of Cambridge. Having scaled up and de-risked our process effectively, our industrial scale trials started at CELSA UK’s 150t (1.2Mt/yr) EAF in Cardiff in May 2024. Commercially, we completed a £2.25m seed round in June 2024, with the goal of starting the commercial production of our cement in 2025.

Description of Technology:

CEC's key innovation is the substitution of recovered cement paste (RCP) for lime used in the steel recycling process. Critically, CEC has proven that steel recycling electric arc furnaces (EAFs) provide the right conditions to reactivate (and hence recycle) RCP extracted from old concrete waste, without interfering with the steelmaking. This co-production process avoids both the kiln-related energy and calcination process emissions from conventional cement production, and leverages existing steelmaking infrastructure. The resulting material is a clinker, which at lab scale has been proven to have the same chemical composition as a Portland cement clinker (i.e. a CEM I). Hence, our product can deliver equivalent technical performance to conventional cement without the negative environmental impact.

Sector:

Cement/Concrete

Type of Supplier:

Final Product Supplier

Supplier Geography:

United Kingdom, Europe

Current Capacity (Mt/Year):

0

Expected Capacity (Mt/Year):

1.7