Imperial College London is part of HARMONI, an EU-funded project worth almost €8 million with 12 partners, coordinated by the Norwegian institute SINTEF. Its aim is to test whether cement plants can replace fossil fuels with a blend of ammonia and hydrogen.
The idea is to recover ammonia from wastewater, top it up with green ammonia and split part of it into hydrogen on site. The partners will combine these technologies in a digital twin of a CEMEX cement plant in Alicante, Spain.
Cement production accounts for about 7% of global CO2 emissions, and in the cement, steel, glass and ceramics industries between 70% and 92% of energy goes to very high-temperature heat, which is hard to electrify.
At Imperial, Professor Evina Katsou’s team will assess the life cycle, costs and social impact of the solution and create an interactive tool and online training. The project began in September 2026 in Oslo and runs until August 2029.
