Final Report Summary - HYDRASPLIT (Development of an environmentally friendly and cost-effective modular hydraulic rock-splitter system for<br/>efficiently breaking large rocks for an improved use in stone quarry extraction)
Executive Summary:
Recent data shows that China, Brazil and the US has cornered over 70% of the world’s stone production market share. Due to technical inefficiencies and a poor economy, Europe lost its 40% lead stronghold in this industry.
After losing technical extraction advantages in equipment as well as jobs, the stone industry is investigating new environmentally friendly and cost-effective equipments to make the splitting of rock blocks more efficient, easy and safe. New hydraulic water-based systems, as the one proposed by the Hydrasplit project represents a potential answer to this need.
Scientists are working on developing an environmentally friendly and cost-effective modular hydraulic rock-splitter for efficiently breaking large rocks for optimal stone quarry extraction. Market analysis accounted for the needs of the end-users of the project, in both the stone and the construction industries. Thinking practically, researchers surveyed industry leaders on such items as the dimensions and characteristics of quarries.
Key design functionalities have been addressed. This included concepts analysis (e.g. from flatten to pressurize hoses), manufacturing processes (e.g. thermal treatments), components (e.g. splitters) and materials investigation (e.g. hose types, connectors, fitting, assembly materials), combined with the functional analysis of quarry working conditions (e.g. borehole patterns) and the user needs. Simulations were conducted to identify each design parameter in each concept on rock breaking capability and technical performance. Simulations paid also substantial attention to the actual rock properties (e.g. fracture mechanics, fracture energy, etc.) to give inputs to the design process and to finally validate the performance in controlled and field environments. .
Currently, in the stone production industry, extraction techniques are dangerous. Explosives are used in various forms for the primary and second cutting. Where there is a need to preserve surrounding rocks and areas and improve safety in quarry activities, Hydrasplit offers a safer and faster solution.
In the construction market, explosives are highly affected, and therefore sometimes not used, by to permission restrictions and danger due to the proximity of humans. In this sense and where these requirements are stringent, Hydrasplit is a promising alternative to explosive in excavation, demolition and trenching. It is easy-to-use and portable with fewer safety issues.
Hydrasplit has been spread at important European industry conferences, fairs and exhibitions. Visibility at these events will continue to strengthen the important relationships built with the construction and stone production industries.
Project Context and Objectives:
Several years ago, Europe represented around 40% of the global natural stone production, so in total, it was the world's largest producer and exporter of natural stone. Traditionally, countries like Italy, Greece, Portugal, Sweden, Spain, Germany and France were acting as important players in the market while nowadays the market is almost dominated by emerging overseas countries such as China, India, Brazil and Turkey which are demonstrating faster rates of growing and trading with respect to the traditional major economies in the natural stone sector. Moreover, in the last decade the European stone sector has been affected by a multitude of world factors mostly related to the economic crisis that occurred between 2006-2010 which carried other consequential events, such as the crisis in Greece in 2009, affecting for the major part of European countries.
Given this, in terms of natural stone production (tons), Europe as a whole is decreasing its production due to a sensible contraction in Southern Europe countries (especially in Italy, Spain and Portugal) where the market is still blocked, while countries like France are growing. Looking outside EU27 countries the scenario changes since although an emerging country such as Turkey is almost stable comparing 2012 vs. 2009, China, Brazil and U.S. are sensibly growing. This leads to the fact in 2012 overseas countries own the 70% of world natural stone production, while EU 27 countries and non-EU 27 countries equally divide the remaining 30%.
Recent forecast for 2014 confirmed these trends.
Europe has not only lost its lead stronghold in the stone industry, with a lower market share and contraction of product imports, but has also suffered a sensible reduction in employment that can be estimated in around 20% in the last decade. In addition to the problems associated to the economical situation, Europe is losing technical advantages in equipment, tools and machinery for rock extraction, that represented a worldwide asset for the past centuries. Technical issues have an impact on the efficiency of the extraction process and by consequence on the associated costs, thus increasing the overall costs of extraction, negatively impacting on the competitive position of Europe against overseas countries.
Therefore, there is clearly the need for Europe to re-join a leading role in both the production of natural stones and in technological improvements that support the competitiveness of the European quarrying industry. In this context, the European co-funded Project Hydrasplit (www.hydrasplit.eu) has now reached its end by developing and testing in operational relevant environment a novel, reliable and environmentally friendly solutions that exploits the use of pressurized water to efficiently split large rock blocks, in the quarry environment.
Consortium members, being composed of RTD performers (D’Appolonia, SP, CBI), technical and highly innovative SMEs (Ripamonti, Emstone, Abra), SMEs end-users (Laskaridis, Emmadoba) and Associations (Euroroc) have been working for two years to design, develop and demonstrate a feasible solution that is technological advanced and cost-effective so that to reach a market that is currently populated by solutions of at low cost, with low technological level (e.g. wedges, explosives) vs. solutions of high technical level (e.g. Darda® splitters) but at high cost. Moreover competing technologies may have issues related to safety of workers (wedges and feathers) or environmental impacts (e.g. explosives). In this scenario Hydrasplit has been designed to bring several advantages with respect to these extraction technologies, to potentially replace them thanks to its safety, higher productivity and extracted rock quality.
Project Results:
WP1 “Definition of system requirements and specifications” defined the basic requirements of the Hydrasplit system leading to the identification of alternatives concepts that are in compliance with target specifications, end users needs and market demand. An extensive market analysis has been carried out to understand dimensions and characteristics of the two main markets Hydrasplit is addressing: primarily the traditional natural and dimensional stone sector and secondarily the construction sector, especially for excavation, tunneling, site and demolition works. To understand the end-users needs and current practices in the stone sector, an ad-hoc survey has been conceived and submitted to relevant quarry owner across Europe to understand which practices, equipments and splitting methods they are use with. In this way and supported by a detailed investigation of size, dimensions and characteristics of quarries across Europe (especially in Italy and Sweden) an estimation of the direct Hydrasplit market has been provided with reference to a specific case study.
Building upon the results of WP1, the project moved to the complete analysis and assessment of three different alternatives (namely PS-steel, PS-cement and PS-water) for the optimization of the original concept. Once the alternatives have been analyzed both in terms of technical and economical drivers, conceptual designs have been generated focusing on the system characteristics, the main components to be analyzed and designed, the way to improve the splitting efficiency. A feasibility study was used to screen among the different conceptual design the one to be further investigated, designed and prototyped in Hydrasplit. Based on this the PS-water concept, exploiting the use of pressurize water into a flattened hose, was selected and the design was carried out both at components and integrated system level. Following the preliminary design of the PS-water solution, an advanced design was accomplished by means of Computer Aided Design (CAD) tools allowing virtual analyzing and simulating the rock-splitter before doing physical tests.
In this context two possible alternatives of the PS-water concept were analyzed, one leading to the realization of the 1st system prototype and the other to the realization of the 2nd system prototype.
Experimental tests of both the 1st and 2nd rock-splitter prototypes were then extensively carried out to assess the splitting force and the splitting behavior. In parallel the manufacturing procedure to realize both prototypes was investigated with the aim of optimizing the steps towards the future industrial manufacturing of the system. This lead to an optimized rock-splitter prototype both at virtual (through 3D CAD) and physical level in terms of components, connections, shaping functionalities, etc. Once the prototype was available extensive tests were carried out in both a controlled (i.e. laboratory) and operationally relevant (i.e. quarry) environment. Tests were conducted for different rock types (e.g. gneiss, granite and marble, etc.) and for different borehole patter configurations. A methodology for the assessment of the results from field tests have been implemented as well. This allowed to identify which components/parts of the system requires a further optimization process, that have been addressed through structural and fluid-dynamics simulations leading to the definition of the final Hydrasplit rock-splitter prototype to be used for the secondary splitting of rock blocks in quarry.
Potential Impact:
Hydrasplit is aiming at impacting on two main markets:
A. The stone industry and particularly the quarrying industry for the primary and secondary cutting of large rock blocks as alternative, safer, faster, and less time consuming solution with respect to technologies that are currently used (e.g. explosives, wedges and feathers, etc.). Indeed with respect to currently used solutions, Hydrasplit represent a viable option in environmental and vibration sensitive areas since it preserves the surrounding rocks and it does not cause excessive disturbance during the splitting operations.
B. The construction market for excavation, demolition, trenching and site works as an alternative solution to explosives and large size equipment/tools in critical areas (e.g. urban areas) and in areas where the use of explosives became non economically effective due to restriction in their used and permissions required for using them. Moreover, Hydrasplit being a safe, silent and non-explosive solution, it represents a viable alternative to explosives in areas where safety, environmental and noise issues are primary requirements to be satisfied.
To ensure a proper exploitation of the project results and the deployment and commercialization of the Hydrasplit system in a timeframe of two years after the end of the project, an adequate exploitation plan has been detailed, together with the identification of target end-users (as from the market study reported in D1.1) and exploitable routes. To this aim the Hydrasplit survey on quarry equipment (www.hydrasplit.eu/en/web/guest/hydrasplit-survey-on-quarry-equipments-available) is a deliberate attempt to strengthen the contact with industrial end-users for a future commercialization of the Hydrasplit system.
Taking into account the market analysis and the results of the market survey, a plan for the protection and distribution of the Intellectual Property (IP) generated by the project was implemented. This leads to the identification of three main project exploitable results:
1) A hydraulic rock-splitter concept able to split and break efficiently large rock blocks without the use of explosives or other hazardous equipment;
2) A modular hydraulic rock-splitter prototype to be used for testing & experimental studies
3) A Computational tool for simulating the system performance, predicting the crack initiation and propagation behavior in different rock types and for different borehole patterns.
The project results have been disseminated based on a clear and dedicated communication strategy whose aim was to attract potential commercial partnerships onto which to build a fruitful long term commercialisation strategy. This strategy has been practically implemented following a twofold approach: on one side Hydrasplit has been disseminated by the participation to selected international events; on the other side end-users awareness has been incresed by bilateral/joint meetings directly involving quarries across Europe. Among others, it is worth mentioning Hydrasplit partecipation in the following events: European Stone Conference (Oslo, September 2013), Marmomacc2013 (Verona, September 2013), Xiamen fair (Xiamen, China, February 2014); Piedra 2014 (Madrid, Spain, May 2014); 11th Natural Stone International Marble, Natural Stone Products & Technologies Fair (Istanbul, Turkey, June 2014); Marmomacc 2014 (Verona, Italy, September 2014), Stone quarry meeting (Aachen, Germany, January 2014) for Belgium, Netherlands and Germany; Stone quarry meeting (Stuttgart, Germany, February 2014) for the D-A-CH countries (Germany, Austria and Switzerland); first national workshop of stone sector, held in Trani (Italy) in July 2013, targeted to quarry owners and the Joint meeting with other research initiative working in the same area of Hydrasplit (e.g. Joint Workshop Hydrasplit – EE-quarry EU project).
List of Websites:
www.hydrasplit.eu
Recent data shows that China, Brazil and the US has cornered over 70% of the world’s stone production market share. Due to technical inefficiencies and a poor economy, Europe lost its 40% lead stronghold in this industry.
After losing technical extraction advantages in equipment as well as jobs, the stone industry is investigating new environmentally friendly and cost-effective equipments to make the splitting of rock blocks more efficient, easy and safe. New hydraulic water-based systems, as the one proposed by the Hydrasplit project represents a potential answer to this need.
Scientists are working on developing an environmentally friendly and cost-effective modular hydraulic rock-splitter for efficiently breaking large rocks for optimal stone quarry extraction. Market analysis accounted for the needs of the end-users of the project, in both the stone and the construction industries. Thinking practically, researchers surveyed industry leaders on such items as the dimensions and characteristics of quarries.
Key design functionalities have been addressed. This included concepts analysis (e.g. from flatten to pressurize hoses), manufacturing processes (e.g. thermal treatments), components (e.g. splitters) and materials investigation (e.g. hose types, connectors, fitting, assembly materials), combined with the functional analysis of quarry working conditions (e.g. borehole patterns) and the user needs. Simulations were conducted to identify each design parameter in each concept on rock breaking capability and technical performance. Simulations paid also substantial attention to the actual rock properties (e.g. fracture mechanics, fracture energy, etc.) to give inputs to the design process and to finally validate the performance in controlled and field environments. .
Currently, in the stone production industry, extraction techniques are dangerous. Explosives are used in various forms for the primary and second cutting. Where there is a need to preserve surrounding rocks and areas and improve safety in quarry activities, Hydrasplit offers a safer and faster solution.
In the construction market, explosives are highly affected, and therefore sometimes not used, by to permission restrictions and danger due to the proximity of humans. In this sense and where these requirements are stringent, Hydrasplit is a promising alternative to explosive in excavation, demolition and trenching. It is easy-to-use and portable with fewer safety issues.
Hydrasplit has been spread at important European industry conferences, fairs and exhibitions. Visibility at these events will continue to strengthen the important relationships built with the construction and stone production industries.
Project Context and Objectives:
Several years ago, Europe represented around 40% of the global natural stone production, so in total, it was the world's largest producer and exporter of natural stone. Traditionally, countries like Italy, Greece, Portugal, Sweden, Spain, Germany and France were acting as important players in the market while nowadays the market is almost dominated by emerging overseas countries such as China, India, Brazil and Turkey which are demonstrating faster rates of growing and trading with respect to the traditional major economies in the natural stone sector. Moreover, in the last decade the European stone sector has been affected by a multitude of world factors mostly related to the economic crisis that occurred between 2006-2010 which carried other consequential events, such as the crisis in Greece in 2009, affecting for the major part of European countries.
Given this, in terms of natural stone production (tons), Europe as a whole is decreasing its production due to a sensible contraction in Southern Europe countries (especially in Italy, Spain and Portugal) where the market is still blocked, while countries like France are growing. Looking outside EU27 countries the scenario changes since although an emerging country such as Turkey is almost stable comparing 2012 vs. 2009, China, Brazil and U.S. are sensibly growing. This leads to the fact in 2012 overseas countries own the 70% of world natural stone production, while EU 27 countries and non-EU 27 countries equally divide the remaining 30%.
Recent forecast for 2014 confirmed these trends.
Europe has not only lost its lead stronghold in the stone industry, with a lower market share and contraction of product imports, but has also suffered a sensible reduction in employment that can be estimated in around 20% in the last decade. In addition to the problems associated to the economical situation, Europe is losing technical advantages in equipment, tools and machinery for rock extraction, that represented a worldwide asset for the past centuries. Technical issues have an impact on the efficiency of the extraction process and by consequence on the associated costs, thus increasing the overall costs of extraction, negatively impacting on the competitive position of Europe against overseas countries.
Therefore, there is clearly the need for Europe to re-join a leading role in both the production of natural stones and in technological improvements that support the competitiveness of the European quarrying industry. In this context, the European co-funded Project Hydrasplit (www.hydrasplit.eu) has now reached its end by developing and testing in operational relevant environment a novel, reliable and environmentally friendly solutions that exploits the use of pressurized water to efficiently split large rock blocks, in the quarry environment.
Consortium members, being composed of RTD performers (D’Appolonia, SP, CBI), technical and highly innovative SMEs (Ripamonti, Emstone, Abra), SMEs end-users (Laskaridis, Emmadoba) and Associations (Euroroc) have been working for two years to design, develop and demonstrate a feasible solution that is technological advanced and cost-effective so that to reach a market that is currently populated by solutions of at low cost, with low technological level (e.g. wedges, explosives) vs. solutions of high technical level (e.g. Darda® splitters) but at high cost. Moreover competing technologies may have issues related to safety of workers (wedges and feathers) or environmental impacts (e.g. explosives). In this scenario Hydrasplit has been designed to bring several advantages with respect to these extraction technologies, to potentially replace them thanks to its safety, higher productivity and extracted rock quality.
Project Results:
WP1 “Definition of system requirements and specifications” defined the basic requirements of the Hydrasplit system leading to the identification of alternatives concepts that are in compliance with target specifications, end users needs and market demand. An extensive market analysis has been carried out to understand dimensions and characteristics of the two main markets Hydrasplit is addressing: primarily the traditional natural and dimensional stone sector and secondarily the construction sector, especially for excavation, tunneling, site and demolition works. To understand the end-users needs and current practices in the stone sector, an ad-hoc survey has been conceived and submitted to relevant quarry owner across Europe to understand which practices, equipments and splitting methods they are use with. In this way and supported by a detailed investigation of size, dimensions and characteristics of quarries across Europe (especially in Italy and Sweden) an estimation of the direct Hydrasplit market has been provided with reference to a specific case study.
Building upon the results of WP1, the project moved to the complete analysis and assessment of three different alternatives (namely PS-steel, PS-cement and PS-water) for the optimization of the original concept. Once the alternatives have been analyzed both in terms of technical and economical drivers, conceptual designs have been generated focusing on the system characteristics, the main components to be analyzed and designed, the way to improve the splitting efficiency. A feasibility study was used to screen among the different conceptual design the one to be further investigated, designed and prototyped in Hydrasplit. Based on this the PS-water concept, exploiting the use of pressurize water into a flattened hose, was selected and the design was carried out both at components and integrated system level. Following the preliminary design of the PS-water solution, an advanced design was accomplished by means of Computer Aided Design (CAD) tools allowing virtual analyzing and simulating the rock-splitter before doing physical tests.
In this context two possible alternatives of the PS-water concept were analyzed, one leading to the realization of the 1st system prototype and the other to the realization of the 2nd system prototype.
Experimental tests of both the 1st and 2nd rock-splitter prototypes were then extensively carried out to assess the splitting force and the splitting behavior. In parallel the manufacturing procedure to realize both prototypes was investigated with the aim of optimizing the steps towards the future industrial manufacturing of the system. This lead to an optimized rock-splitter prototype both at virtual (through 3D CAD) and physical level in terms of components, connections, shaping functionalities, etc. Once the prototype was available extensive tests were carried out in both a controlled (i.e. laboratory) and operationally relevant (i.e. quarry) environment. Tests were conducted for different rock types (e.g. gneiss, granite and marble, etc.) and for different borehole patter configurations. A methodology for the assessment of the results from field tests have been implemented as well. This allowed to identify which components/parts of the system requires a further optimization process, that have been addressed through structural and fluid-dynamics simulations leading to the definition of the final Hydrasplit rock-splitter prototype to be used for the secondary splitting of rock blocks in quarry.
Potential Impact:
Hydrasplit is aiming at impacting on two main markets:
A. The stone industry and particularly the quarrying industry for the primary and secondary cutting of large rock blocks as alternative, safer, faster, and less time consuming solution with respect to technologies that are currently used (e.g. explosives, wedges and feathers, etc.). Indeed with respect to currently used solutions, Hydrasplit represent a viable option in environmental and vibration sensitive areas since it preserves the surrounding rocks and it does not cause excessive disturbance during the splitting operations.
B. The construction market for excavation, demolition, trenching and site works as an alternative solution to explosives and large size equipment/tools in critical areas (e.g. urban areas) and in areas where the use of explosives became non economically effective due to restriction in their used and permissions required for using them. Moreover, Hydrasplit being a safe, silent and non-explosive solution, it represents a viable alternative to explosives in areas where safety, environmental and noise issues are primary requirements to be satisfied.
To ensure a proper exploitation of the project results and the deployment and commercialization of the Hydrasplit system in a timeframe of two years after the end of the project, an adequate exploitation plan has been detailed, together with the identification of target end-users (as from the market study reported in D1.1) and exploitable routes. To this aim the Hydrasplit survey on quarry equipment (www.hydrasplit.eu/en/web/guest/hydrasplit-survey-on-quarry-equipments-available) is a deliberate attempt to strengthen the contact with industrial end-users for a future commercialization of the Hydrasplit system.
Taking into account the market analysis and the results of the market survey, a plan for the protection and distribution of the Intellectual Property (IP) generated by the project was implemented. This leads to the identification of three main project exploitable results:
1) A hydraulic rock-splitter concept able to split and break efficiently large rock blocks without the use of explosives or other hazardous equipment;
2) A modular hydraulic rock-splitter prototype to be used for testing & experimental studies
3) A Computational tool for simulating the system performance, predicting the crack initiation and propagation behavior in different rock types and for different borehole patterns.
The project results have been disseminated based on a clear and dedicated communication strategy whose aim was to attract potential commercial partnerships onto which to build a fruitful long term commercialisation strategy. This strategy has been practically implemented following a twofold approach: on one side Hydrasplit has been disseminated by the participation to selected international events; on the other side end-users awareness has been incresed by bilateral/joint meetings directly involving quarries across Europe. Among others, it is worth mentioning Hydrasplit partecipation in the following events: European Stone Conference (Oslo, September 2013), Marmomacc2013 (Verona, September 2013), Xiamen fair (Xiamen, China, February 2014); Piedra 2014 (Madrid, Spain, May 2014); 11th Natural Stone International Marble, Natural Stone Products & Technologies Fair (Istanbul, Turkey, June 2014); Marmomacc 2014 (Verona, Italy, September 2014), Stone quarry meeting (Aachen, Germany, January 2014) for Belgium, Netherlands and Germany; Stone quarry meeting (Stuttgart, Germany, February 2014) for the D-A-CH countries (Germany, Austria and Switzerland); first national workshop of stone sector, held in Trani (Italy) in July 2013, targeted to quarry owners and the Joint meeting with other research initiative working in the same area of Hydrasplit (e.g. Joint Workshop Hydrasplit – EE-quarry EU project).
List of Websites:
www.hydrasplit.eu