Objective
In 2007 EU countries represented about 40% of global natural stone production, bringing Europe as one of world’s largest produces and exporters of natural stone. European countries like Italy, Greece, Portugal, Sweden, and Spain, are important players while other European countries are in positively growing. The European sector consisted of 60,000 companies and employing a total of more than 500,000 workers is strongly dominated by SMEs, being more than 90% and having less than 50 employees each. In spite of its leading role on the global market, Europe has been loosing power due to non-European aggressive trading competition bringing a decrease in employment of more than 15% in the last 6 years. At extraction only 20-25% of extracted rocks are accepted, meeting the requirements for being further processed into a cost-efficient product. This quantity constitutes a major environmental impact because the discarded rocks (75-80%) are considered unprofitable to process into valuable products.
Within this framework, the need for a reliable and cost-efficient extractive tool is of great importance for the competitiveness of the European quarrying industry. This project is based on two patents and will involve the development of a novel cost-efficient and environmentally friendly system which exploits pressurized water to efficiently split large rocks during quarry extraction activities. The system will be designed to bring several advantages with respect to explosives and other extraction technologies, to potentially replace them thanks to its higher productivity and extracted rock quality. The system will be suitable for different rock types and could be used in different environmental and vibration sensitive areas without damaging the surrounding rock or causing excessive disturbance to the environment during the splitting operations. A prototype of the system will be assembled and tested to evaluate and optimise its performance in real working conditions.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
- social sciences economics and business economics production economics productivity
- social sciences economics and business business and management employment
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Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
FP7-SME-2012
See other projects for this call
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Coordinator
28877 ORNAVASSO
Italy
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.