Modelling study of a mineral waste carbonation process

Abstract

This study is part of the Walloon Region Mineral Loop project in which seven Belgian industrial and academic partners are participating. The Mineral LOOP project aims to design, develop, install, and operate an industrial pilot unit for the transformation of mineral waste into secondary products can be reused in different applications, this transformation is carried out by capturing the CO2 coming from the lime production process by mineral carbonation. To contribute to this project, this master thesis proposes a model of a mineral carbonation process using construction waste. The objectives of this thesis are: to study the mineral carbonation reaction in a general sense and applied to the Mineral Loop project, to study the influence of different key parameters such as water-cement ratio or pH to the carbonation process, to study the phenomena involved in the carbonation, to propose a mathematical model to characterize the phenomena in the reactor and in the cement paste particles, to create a Matlab code to verify the proposed mathematical model and to analyze the results.