Objective
The manufacture of roofing slates requires the extraction of large slate blocks from a favourable deposit. These blocks are cut into rectangular, 12 cm thick parallelepipeds (called repartons ) whose dimensions are slightly superior to the slate that is going to be manufactured. These repartons are then split into fendis along the plane of cleavage of the slate; this is the splitting operation, which is followed by the edge dressing operation whose purpose is to produce a slate with definitive dimensions, rustic looking bevelled edges which give an attractive aspect to the slates, when they are laid on a roof. These operations generate a lot of waste (only 4 tons of slates are produced for 100 tons of broken down rock) and have remained very manual: the labour expenses represent 80% of the total expenses of a factory). Europe will not be able to preserve a long time its slate industry without rapidly correcting these two weak points. This research project aims at developing a new machine to split the slaty rocks. This new machine will make it possible to exploit the slate contained in the small slate blocks that are now left in the waste heaps of the quarries because their transformation into finished products is no longer profitable. In addition to the reduction of the volume of the slate waste and of the environmental nuisances, the project mainly aims at strengthening the competitivity of the European slate industries, threatened by the competition from countries with a low labour cost. Such a project is based on a major innovation: splitting the small blocks with a jet of water under a 2500 bar pressure whereas slate blocks are presently split with compressed air or manually in countries where labour is cheap. Water splitting is close to the gestures of the old time splitters, who also used to collect all the small blocks in the mine. Thus, the mechanization of splitting in industrialized countries has significantly deteriorated the yield on material which was around 10% in Europe with manual splitting and which is now 4% with air mechanized splitting. The objective of this research is to recover part of this deterioration by raising the yield on material to above 6%, that is a 50% improvement compared with the techniques now in use. The development of an industrial water splitting process will be based on 3 main points: - the seizing and presentation of smalls blocks of any shape to the splitting machine at the rate of 1 block every 2 minutes - the adaptation of the machine according to the various kinds of slate worked -the automatic handling of the fendis (slate parallelepipeds after the splitting operation) of any shape downstream of the machine. The methodology followed will be based on the progressive elimination, for each component of the pilot, of the technical risks essentially linked to the difficulty of detecting the faults on a slate plate upstream from the pilot and on the automatic quality control at the end of the manufacturing process. His research will contain three types of works: - A theoretical research in order to conceive the critical elements of the process -The construction of a laboratory pilot and its mechanical development (in a later industrialization stage, it will be replaced by a pre industrial prototype) An operational research in order to determine the optimal parameters of splitting for the various European slaty rocks. The development and the industrialization of the process, the commercialization of the slates exploited thanks to the new machine will require a two year period.
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: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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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.
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
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
44152 Ancenis
France
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.