Carbon capture techniques will continue to be a top priority for Taiwan Cement Corp’s (台灣水泥) Hualien-based subsidiary Ho-Ping Power Co (和平電廠), chairman Nelson Chang (張安平) said yesterday at a news conference in Hualien, citing reductions in production costs and new business potential for growing microalgae as benefits.
Taiwan Cement, the nation’s largest cement maker, has since 2011 been involved in a carbon capture project at Ho-Ping Power through collaborations with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) since 2011. The project aims to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and promote a circular economy.
PILOT PLANT
The pilot plant at Ho-Ping Power is the world’s largest facility to employ the calcium looping process for carbon capture, the company said.
The calcium looping capture process uses calcium oxide, a common ingredient in cement products, as a sorbent for carbon dioxide and could reduce the carbon dioxide capture cost from more than US$45 per tonne to US$30 per tonne, the company said.
Taiwan Cement and ITRI last year signed an agreement to extend their technical cooperation on the project.
The pilot production lines are likely to begin commercial operations before 2022, Chang said, citing difficulty scaling up the project.
The firm has allocated a capital budget of nearly NT$70 million (US$2.3 million) to the technique in the past few years and plans to spend NT$10 million per year in the future.
Apart from lowering production costs, carbon capture technology also turned out to have unexpected business potential after the company found that captured carbon dioxide could be used to grow microalgae.
MICROALGAE
Microalgae — a major source of biofuel — can also produce astaxanthin, a key ingredient in high-value skincare products and medicines.
Taiwan Cement said it is seeking business partners to promote skincare uses for astaxanthin, instead of launching its own brand.
The company needs to stay focused on its core business and has no plans to tap into the retailing industry, Chang told the Taipei Times.
Taiwan Cement’s long-term goal was to transform itself from a traditional cement maker into a “green” service provider, the company said.
Revenue generated by the company’s two major energy subsidiaries, Ho-Ping Power and Moli Energy Corp (能元科技), made up nearly 15 percent of Taiwan Cement’s total sales last year, while its cement business contributed 73 percent, data showed.
‘GREEN ENERGY’
Meanwhile, the company plans to launch a large-scale “green” energy project at the Changhua Coastal Industrial Park (彰濱工業區), Chang said.
He declined to provide details on the new project, saying only that it is to include wind power generation.
Many companies put their unused factories up for sale, but the company hopes to “revitalize” its abandoned facilities, Chang said.
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) have repeatedly hit new highs, but an equity analyst said the stock’s valuation remains within a reasonable range and any pullback would likely be technical. The contract chipmaker’s historical price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio has ranged between 20 and 30, Cathay Futures Consultant Co (國泰證期) analyst Tsai Ming-han (蔡明翰) told Central News Agency. With market consensus projecting that TSMC would post earnings per share of about NT$100 (US$3.17) this year, supported by strong global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, and the stock currently trading at a P/E ratio of below 25, Tsai said the valuation
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has triggered a seismic reshuffling of global equity markets, with Taiwan and South Korea muscling past European nations one by one. With its stock market now valued at nearly US$4.3 trillion, Taiwan surpassed the UK, Europe’s biggest market, earlier this month, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. South Korea is about US$140 billion away from doing the same. The tech-heavy Asian markets have shot past Germany and France in the past seven months. The shift is largely down to massive gains in shares of three companies that provide essential hardware for AI: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電),
The US Department of Commerce last week ordered multiple chip equipment companies to halt shipments of certain tools to China’s second-largest chipmaker, Hua Hong Semiconductor Ltd (華虹半導體), its latest action to slow the country’s development of advanced chips, two people familiar with the matter said. The department sent letters to at least a handful of companies informing them of restrictions on tools and other materials destined for two Hua Hong facilities US officials believe make China’s most sophisticated chips, the people said. Top US chip equipment companies Lam Research Corp, Applied Materials Inc and KLA Corp, each of which has significant
RSS