Calix and its subsidiary, Leilac, has successfully completed the pre-Front-End Engineering Design (pre-FEED) phase of its flagship Project ZETA, marking an important step on the pathway to building the world’s first commercial electric lime calciner with carbon capture and use of unavoidable process carbon dioxide emissions.
Project ZETA aims to produce near-zero emissions lime for sale to the South Australian market and sell captured process CO2 to the South Australia Solar Fuels Project (SASF) to make sustainable transport fuels.
Lime is a critical material, widely used across industries including iron and steel, aluminium, and water treatment. Demand for lime is projected to grow in line with infrastructure and energy transitions, making decarbonisation essential for the sector. As Leilac’s first commercial lime project, ZETA represents not only a world-first demonstration of electric calcination, but also a major step on Leilac’s pathway to commercialisation.
The project is supported by a $15 million grant, subject to matched funding, from the Australian Government’s Carbon Capture Technologies program and aims to prove the viability of electric calcination for cement and lime at commercial scale. By capturing unavoidable process CO₂ emissions while using renewable electricity, ZETA aims to demonstrate a viable pathway to decarbonise industries responsible for over 8% of global emissions.
The completion of the pre-FEED phase has provided a robust technical and economic foundation for the next stage of development. Completed engineering work to date has focused on:
- Implementation of the Leilac technology for lime production
- The operating flexibility required to enable the utilisation of variable renewable electricity in South Australia
- The design considerations for utilisation of local and available limestone feed materials
- High level integration considerations for providing CO2 to SASF.
Leilac CEO Daniel Rennie said passing pre-FEED was an important milestone for the project. “ZETA is a world-first project, aiming to provide a commercial demonstration of how our indirect heating technology can combine electrification with process CO2 capture to deliver an efficient, flexible and scalable solution for low-carbon cement and lime.”
With pre-FEED complete, the Project has advanced to the FEED stage and remains on budget and on schedule.
