Adani Cement tests carbon capture and electric heat in India 2026
Adani Cement and Leilac will test carbon capture and hybrid electric heating in Gujarat to scale lower-carbon cement with renewable power.
Fuente: Adani Group
The Sanghipuram project
Adani Cement has opened a new decarbonisation track for India: Ambuja Cements, part of the group, signed an agreement with Leilac to develop a commercial pathway for lower-carbon cement at Sanghipuram, Gujarat. The corporate source, dated 22 June 2026, describes a demonstration that will combine carbon capture with hybrid electric heating at a cement plant. The proposal is intended to reduce emissions, lower fuel consumption and increase the use of renewable electricity in the process.
The relevant technical point is not only capturing CO₂ downstream. The project will test whether electric heat can be integrated into the thermal core of the operation and, if the demonstration succeeds, become a scalable platform for lower-carbon cement in India.
Why now
The move comes as Indian cement producers try to reconcile capacity growth, renewable power and climate pressure. Adani Cement presents the alliance as part of a broader SBTi-validated net-zero strategy toward 2050. The company also links the initiative to captive renewable power and to the possibility of improving the economics of carbon capture.
For the market, the signal is clear: clinker decarbonisation is no longer limited to incremental efficiency or cement blending. It is entering an industrial testing phase in which electrification, capture, alternative fuels and continuous operation must coexist without compromising quality or availability.
The Knergy Angle
For KNERGY, the news matters because it confirms that the competitive bottleneck will sit in thermal integration across the pyroprocess. An electric heater or a capture unit can reduce emissions, but the kiln still needs a stable flame, sufficient heat transfer and flexibility in front of variable fuels. Localised H₂/O₂ injection can be a complementary lever: it increases combustion reactivity, helps sustain AFR co-firing and may create room for lower thermal consumption, with the technical reference of 30–70 kcal/kg used only as an analytical range when plant evidence supports it.
The industrial question is not whether one technology will solve cement carbon, but how the layers are coordinated. If Adani Cement combines renewable electricity, capture and alternative fuels, what injection point, H₂/O₂ rate and control logic would sustain flame profile, burnout and clinker quality without losing operating stability?
Milestones to watch
The first milestone will be proving that the demonstration can run with reproducible data and without turning thermal complexity into production risk. The next question will be scale-up: how much fossil fuel can really be displaced, what share of captured CO₂ has viable use or storage, and how renewable power is integrated with continuous thermal demand.
If the project advances, India will have an important reference for combining capture and electrification in cement. For other groups, the lesson will be to look at the whole system: kiln, calciner, fuels, electricity, capture and control must be designed as a process architecture, not as isolated equipment.