As global climate continues to warm, the demand for technologies that can effectively remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is increasing. There are countless proposed solutions for sequestering carbon dioxide, but it is difficult to verify whether the claims of supporters of innovative technologies for reducing carbon dioxide emissions are true. In fact, how to accurately evaluate these claims has become a core issue in the voluntary carbon trading market (VCM) of private enterprises, which increasingly emphasizes the need to monitor, verify, and report on the actual capture and storage of carbon dioxide.
Carbonaide is a Finnish company serving the concrete industry. In response to the above needs, the company has developed a solution and is ready to launch it into the market. With the support and collaboration of Vaisala, Carbonaide's solution is actually quite simple and practical: accurately measuring all relevant parameters.
　　Faced with enormous challenges, intelligent solutions are needed:
The carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to climate change come from multiple sources, with the concrete industry alone accounting for 8% of global carbon emissions, mainly from the traditional production process of Portland cement. Given that the carbon emissions from cement alone pose a significant challenge to the 2015 Paris Agreement (aimed at keeping global temperature rise below 2 ℃), the United Nations has actually required the cement industry to reduce carbon emissions by 16% over the next decade.
Every ton of Portland cement produced emits up to 800-900 kilograms of carbon dioxide. With increasingly strict laws on concrete production emissions, there is a growing demand for efficient technologies to reduce concrete carbon dioxide emissions. But there are multiple challenges: how to remove carbon dioxide? Where should we seal it? How to achieve this economically and affordably? Another important point is how to accurately measure the actual completion of the process?
　　Specific Cement Solution - Jiangsu Chenming Solution:
Carbonaid, a startup based in Finland, can provide a solution. Simply put, Carbonaid utilizes its professional knowledge to transform concrete, which emits a large amount of carbon dioxide, into a carbon sink for storing carbon dioxide. The company's CEO Tapio Vehmas is an analytical chemist with over 20 years of experience in the field of concrete. He co founded Carbonaide with Chief Operating Officer Jonne Hirvonen. As Vehmas said, "Our goal is very clear, which is to use cutting-edge technology to build a more sustainable future. This technology can reduce carbon emissions from concrete while sequestering more carbon dioxide than its total carbon emissions throughout its entire lifecycle
Vehmas explained that Carbonaid provides effective and powerful carbonation technology for precast concrete manufacturers. We are experts in the field of carbon sequestration and sustainable carbon dioxide value chain. With our technology, concrete manufacturers can reduce cement consumption in daily production and mineralize carbon dioxide into concrete, thereby reducing the carbon footprint of their products. ”
　Vaisala technology provides winning strategies:
Jiangsu Chenming Operations Officer Jonne Hirvonen is eager to share the advantages of its production ready innovative technology and how her team benefits from Vaisala's measurement tools. Our advantage lies in our ability to accurately measure and control the carbon solidification process. We make our products as easy to install and use as possible, which is equally important. Most of our measurement work is naturally related to carbon dioxide concentration, and the quality of online measurement data is our primary concern
Hirvonen continued, "Unlike many companies, our carbonization process can be efficiently and accurately validated through process measurement without the need for continuous sampling of concrete products. We faced a challenge in the early stages: carbon dioxide is typically measured at ppm levels or for workplace safety purposes, but we measure carbon dioxide for multiple purposes. It is precisely for this reason that we need new solutions, but we cannot risk compromising the quality of measurement. At this point, we realized that Vaisala could play an important role in our solution
Their initial demand for Vaisala was very simple. When conducting process research and development, they are aware that there will definitely be high measurement requirements and are eager to collaborate with partners who truly understand this. Hirvonen also emphasized that collaborating with Vaisala is not only beneficial in the initial research and development stage, but he pointed out that "if the business is expected to grow, then the enterprise will only be interested in partners who have the ability to provide services. Our goal is not limited to process research and development, but focuses on large-scale implementation.
As Antti Viitanen, Product Manager at Vaisala, puts it, "Sustainability focuses more on empirical data rather than grandiose claims. To achieve decarbonization, reliable measurement data is essential
Hirvonen and Vehmas both emphasize that not only do their concrete manufacturing customers require precise and high-quality measurement results, but the entire construction industry that uses these concrete products also has this demand. As Hirvonen said, "Solutions cannot be clumsy or difficult to use. Since buildings have to stand for decades, our industry only accepts strong and reliable solutions
Regarding Carbonaid's plans for the next few years, Vehmas said, "Our goal is to sequester 500 million tons of carbon dioxide by 2050. We believe that there will be no major obstacles on the road to achieving this goal because we now have industrial scale processing capabilities and the market demand for our products is very clear, even obvious. In fact, if our production process is adopted globally in the production of cement, we can capture 1.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide