Progressive Planet provides update on cement and fertilizer products

KAMLOOPS — Progressive Planet Solutions Inc., developing CleanTech solutions, provided a corporate update of its activities.

Cement Innovation Partnership with Pyrogenesis Canada

Progressive Planet announced a collaboration with Pyrogenesis Canada to explore two different objectives including:

• To determine the feasibility of producing post-consumer glass nanoparticles.
• To explore the feasibility of converting widely available, high-grade, crystalline silica into amorphous silica. Only amorphous silica works to enhance the strength of concrete.

The energy costs of producing nanoparticles were prohibitive, but the use of plasma torches to transform crystalline silica into amorphous silica offered promise.

The contract required Pyrogenesis to deliver 500 grams of converted silica. This material was delivered in early February 2024 and PLAN conducted testing and confirmed that the conversion had occurred with over 90% conversion.

The next step is to confirm that the powder is reactive as a supplementary cementing material (SCM). PLAN has scheduled the production of mortar cubes using the powder during the week of March 4, 2024. Full details of compressive strength and water demand will be released after the 28-day compressive tests are completed. PLAN anticipates releasing these results in the second week of April 2024.

Crystalline silica is one of the most abundant materials in the earth’s crust and the ability to economically convert it into amorphous silica would offer a new supply of material to compensate for fly ash which is no longer being generated from coal fired power plants which are required to shut down in Canada before 2030.

“While this material still needs to prove its merit through compressive strength testing in cement mortars, I wish to acknowledge the effort made by the technical team at Pyrogenesis over the last two years to overcome hurdle after hurdle to reach the conversion rate of over 90%” stated Steve Harpur, CEO of Progressive Planet.

Supply Demand Forces Affecting Fly Ash

According to the Capital Power website, https://www.capitalpower.com/operations/genesee-1-2/, the two coal fired power plants, Genesee 1 and 2, that produce fly ash near Edmonton, Alberta, will cease to burn coal in 2024. With the conversion to natural gas, approximately 180,0000 tonnes of fly ash that were consumed annually by the cement industry will no longer be generated once the two power plants switch over to consuming natural gas to generate power.

According to the Transalta website, https://transalta.com/about-us/our-operations/facilities/centralia/, the massive coal burning power plant in Washington State will cease burning coal in 2025. The conversion of this plant to natural gas will result in approximately 840,000 US tons of fly ash will no longer be produced annually for use by the cement industry.