Periodic Reporting for period 2 - SMART GROUND (SMART data collection and inteGRation platform to enhance availability and accessibility of data and infOrmation in the EU territory on SecoNDary Raw Materials)
Período documentado: 2017-04-01 hasta 2018-03-31
Critical Raw Materials (CRMs) and Raw Materials (RMs) are essential for the EU economy; considering the increasing scarcity and raising prices of RMs, their recycling and recovery from anthropogenic deposits is crucial. To date there is no homogeneous inventory available of Secondary Raw Materials (SRMs ) and CRMs present in EU landfills, and best management practices to recover SRMs from landfill activities are inefficient. SMART GROUND fostered resource recovery from both municipal solid waste (MSW) landfill sites and extractive waste (EW) facilities. Thus, the following results have been achieved: i) Collection of quantitative and structural knowledge from existing CRMs and SRMs resources, identifying critical points and bottlenecks that hinder their effective use and identifying the most promising markets for their recovery. ii) Identification of possible output material flows from scenarios and assessment of market possibilities for the substitution of the primary RMs. iii) Accomplishment of a series of pilot studies on CRMs and SRMs recovery potential from anthropogenic deposits and translation of knowledge and understanding gained into scientific recommendations to replicate the knowledge in other scenarios, also taking into account the broader sustainable development and circular economy context. iv) Development of a suitable data structure to store data in the Smart Ground Platform on different detail levels. v) Development of an online platform (http://smartground.atosresearch.eu/home(se abrirá en una nueva ventana)) to facilitate the access to information on available CRMs and SRMs for end-users, with the support of an innovative semantic tagging module. vi) Raising the awareness among policy makers and the wider public of the societal benefits of CRMs and SRMs recovery from landfill and EW facilities.
SMART GROUND is conceived as a collaborative space for site operators, public administrators, landfill mining business companies; offering a repository that stores full datasets published and curated by the user community with a crowd-sourcing approach and facilitates the visualization and assessment of the information. The platform plans to become a waste material marketplace connecting private businesses (demand) with RMs providers (supply) or with clients for landfill mining projects. The SMART GROUND database stores information that is structured and converted into searchable, downloadable and easy to process files (csv). The modular and flexible design of the database would allow a potential extension or merging with other databases. Another important aspect of the SMART GROUND platform is the semantic tagging module; that enables annotation of existing data with user-provided and crowd-sourced knowledge and integration of different information sources, with the help of domain experts and/or data users. Thanks to this module, data stored in the relational data back-end can be fused (a) with ontological knowledge, (b) with information of interest to the user, that can complement the database content, and (c) with user-provided and crowd-sourced knowledge bases to provide rich, open user enriched data. Furthermore, the platform allows rough estimations of waste remains in EW facilities and landfill sites, provided that sample data are available. A set of workshops and events have been organized and attended to promote the platform. Meetings with stakeholders – whose needs and interests have been identified through a stakeholders’ survey - have been organized as well as training courses where all the materials developed and results achieved have been presented to the audience. A set of activities have been developed to collect data and information necessary to populate SG platform.
A standardized procedure framework to collect, organize and harmonize data on SRMs amount within anthropogenic deposits has been developed, reviewing existing standards in regards to waste management and extractive industries. This led to develop a set of best practice recommendations. Specifically, a set of recommendations for site investigation for both MSW and Industrial Waste (IW) landfill sites and EW facilities has been completed and used for the pilot feasibility studies. The guidelines were useful to develop the training materials.
The pilot studies included MSW, IW landfill sites and EW facilities. Detailed 2D and 3D thematic mapping were carried out to identify hotspot for SRMs recovery. This was further supported by a comprehensive physico-chemical (and mineralogical for EW facilities) characterization on the different collected waste material fractions, in order to estimate the amount of CRMs and SRMs available at the sites, but also to identify the opportunity of recovering other valuable materials (SRMs) in the same time. Moreover, environmental impacts (on air, water and soil) connected to on-site and off-site processes to recover SRM/CRM and transportation, focusing on EW facilities and landfills have been identified, with a focus also on the health and safety issues.
A standardized procedure framework to collect, organize and harmonize data on SRMs amount within anthropogenic deposits has been developed, reviewing existing standards in regards to waste management and extractive industries. This led to develop a set of best practice recommendations. Specifically, a set of recommendations for site investigation for both MSW and Industrial Waste (IW) landfill sites and EW facilities has been completed and used for the pilot feasibility studies. The guidelines were useful to develop the training materials.
The pilot studies included MSW, IW landfill sites and EW facilities. Detailed 2D and 3D thematic mapping were carried out to identify hotspot for SRMs recovery. This was further supported by a comprehensive physico-chemical (and mineralogical for EW facilities) characterization on the different collected waste material fractions, in order to estimate the amount of CRMs and SRMs available at the sites, but also to identify the opportunity of recovering other valuable materials (SRMs) in the same time. Moreover, environmental impacts (on air, water and soil) connected to on-site and off-site processes to recover SRM/CRM and transportation, focusing on EW facilities and landfills have been identified, with a focus also on the health and safety issues.
The following progress beyond the state of the art has been fully accomplished by the SMART GROUND project: Development of Data Collection Plans for the characterization of different types of waste deposits. The methodology was developed and validated through in-depth characterization studies of selected pilot landfills with strongly different characters. Such Data Collection Plans include sampling, samples preparation and analyses protocols. The obtained results suggest that such a methodology can be adopted for the estimation of the SRMs potential in landfills and EW facilities. Development of harmonized procedure tests to analyze the environmental impacts (on soil, air and water) and human health issues connected to landfills and to RM and SRM exploitation activities from waste. Creation of a comprehensive and integrative database platform: SMART GROUND platform allows end-users to identify and match the supply and demand for SRM by interrogating the data and identifying suitable urban waste landfill sites and/or EW facilities for SRM recovery and other valuable materials. It is important to note that SG platform embedded services is an evolving process and therefore as information becomes available the platform and data will be refined accordingly. Creation of modeling and decision support tools, based on new technologies, case studies and reported successes and failures predict the spread of SRM available across EU landfills and EW facilities to allow targeted SRM recovery market. Development of guidelines and procedures for SRM recovery from anthropogenic deposits (landfills and EW facilities), that help promoting SRMs recovery across the EU and tapping into a pool of resources which is today largely underexploited. Furthermore, SMART GROUND boosts the EU economy in line with its Circular Economy approach, by reducing risks to the EU Raw Materials supply thanks to the networking and knowledge transfer activities carried out by the consortium. SMART GROUND open source software gives the chance to developers to build up new and innovative solutions following an open innovation approach.