Project description
Turning demolition waste into new contracts
Construction and demolition (C&D) waste originates from the construction, renovation or demolition of houses and infrastructures. Since concrete is the most widely used material in construction, an innovative technology has been developed to generate high-quality recycled concrete aggregates for use in new concrete. However, this technology still faces technical barriers. Additionally, there are lesser-known and emerging C&D waste materials for which technological and business solutions do not yet exist. The EU-funded VEEP project will eco-design, develop and demonstrate new cost-effective technological solutions. These solutions will lead to innovative closed-loop circular approaches for recycling C&D waste into novel multilayer precast concrete elements. These elements will integrate new concretes and superinsulation material produced, using at least 75 % recycled C&D waste.
Objective
Around 461 million ton/year of C&DW are generated in EU28. Recent studies on the characterization of C&DW samples at European level revealed a predominant fraction of concrete (52% average). Over the last years, novel technology has been developed aiming to guarantee high quality recycled concrete aggregates for use in new concrete, thereby closing the concrete loop. The most advanced concrete recycling technologies currently produce coarse (>4mm) recycled concrete aggregates by removing cement paste from the surface of the aggregates. However, the fine (0-4 mm) fraction, ca. 40% of the concrete waste, still faces technical barriers to be incorporated into new concrete and consequently, is often down-cycled. At the other extreme, there are minor (e.g. glass) and emerging (e.g. mineral wool) C&DW materials, currently accounting for 0.7% of the total, but revealing growing rates as consequence of European regulations. Those emerging C&DW streams have not yet found technological and business solutions, being mostly landfilled. On the other hand, concrete is the most widely used material in building, with a growing trend towards prefabrication. The European precast concrete sector faces diverse needs for resource efficiency improvement (reduction in natural resource consumption and metabolization of waste materials, reduction in carbon footprint and embodied energy, design for reuse, increase in process efficiency and waste minimization, lighter solutions, enhanced thermal performance through novel cost-effective insulating materials). Aiming at facing these challenges, VEEP main objective is to eco-design, develop and demonstrate new cost-effective technological solutions that will lead to novel closed-loop circular approaches for C&DW recycling into novel multilayer precast concrete elements (for both new buildings and refurbishment) incorporating new concretes as well as superinsulation material produced by using at least 75% (by weight) of C&DW recycled materials.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinator
16129 Genova
Italy