[ad_1]
Furno Cement will start up Obtaining a grant worth $20 million From the Department of Energy, money will help the company build up to eight mini-kilns at a concrete plant in Chicago.
Chicago may not seem like a place where cement is hard to come by. But with the nearest kiln 100 miles away, concrete companies must pay heavily for materials to keep up with demand. Forno mini ovens promise to reduce pollution and eliminate transportation costs.
Forno’s partner in the project, Ozinga, currently purchases 60,000 tons of cement annually from suppliers for use in Chinatown on Chicago’s South Side. There, the binder is mixed with aggregate to produce concrete used in construction projects throughout the city.
Most cement plants are huge facilities, requiring sprawling logistics networks to get materials to where they are needed. But Forno’s new project will be limited to the amount used by Ozinga.
“We have scaled our facility, the project, to that extent.” Forno Founder and CEO Gurinder Nagra told TechCrunch. Nagra will appear on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 in San Francisco on October 28. “They have access to virgin limestone in addition to already recycled materials.”
To power the eight furnaces that Mountain View-based Forno will install, Ozinga may use biogas, a form of methane produced by the decomposition of organic matter. This, coupled with the use of recycled materials, will significantly reduce the climate impact of cement made at the facility.
Cement is one of the most polluting industries on the planet, generating 8% of all carbon pollution. It is created when minerals containing calcium, such as limestone, are cooked under intense heat. This process, known as calcination, produces cement with large amounts of carbon dioxide, as well as pollution from any fossil fuels used to generate the necessary heat. Every metric ton of cement produces 600 kilograms of carbon pollution.
Most cement today is produced in huge rotary kilns, which are long horizontal tubes through which heat and raw materials flow. It is inefficient, as only about 30% of the heat is used for calcination; The rest is lost.
Forno shrinks the kiln and turns it upright, a development that allows more heat to take part in the calcination reaction, reducing fossil fuel pollution by at least 70% and completely eliminating it when burned with hydrogen.
The startup raised a $6.5 million seed round in March, TechCrunch exclusively reported. The federal grant will cover much of the project. For the rest, and to cover other expenses, Forno will raise a Series A round starting in early 2025, said Kirsten Jacobsen, Forno’s chief marketing officer.
The deal with Ozinga, which Forno calls Project Oz — a nod to both the project partner and Nagra’s home country — will create 50 construction jobs and 30 permanent jobs. The Department of Energy was particularly interested in this statistic, Jacobsen said. “Some coal plants have been closed, and the Department of Energy grant is intended to bring jobs back to people who were displaced,” she said.
Forno was not the only cement startup to receive an award from the Department of Energy. Terra CO2, based in Golden, Colorado, has secured $52.6 million to build a new manufacturing facility outside Salt Lake City. The plant will produce a cement alternative that is much less polluting than existing Portland cement.
[ad_2]