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RECONMATIC will deliver 6 demonstration case studies, carried out in 5 different European countries, piloting developed technologies on real building and infrastructure projects covering different stages of the life-cycle, as well as the common practice at recycling plants. Each of these demonstrations will be assessed by a developed sustainability and circularity assessment tool to provide additional verification and proof of implementability in the real conditions.
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Czech Republic
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Greece
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Italy
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Spain
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UK
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China
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Waste concrete reduction during construction phase
GREECE
Blockchain application supporting reduction of construction waste generation used on concrete logistics processes
Concrete is the most utilised composite material in civil engineering with severe environmental impacts. Currently, automation and efficient concrete logistics in terms of order placement, fresh concrete production queuing and delivery on site is limited, leading to excessive production and low-level recycling or fresh concrete damping, also increasing consumption of non-renewable resources and carbon footprint. Active tracking of information on material properties & logistics, (supply) chain, implemented via a common platform, including sensors, AI and GPS technologies holds a potential to significantly reduce such waste generation, while providing economic benefits, supporting the zero-waste strategy for construction sites. For inevitable residua, technical solutions will be installed and validated to maximise the reuse of the resources (extraction of water and mineral particles and their use in suitable concrete mixtures or products). This solution is primarily to be demonstrated on concrete supply chain but similarly is applicable to other composite materials like asphalt mixtures etc.
ITALY
Digital management of materials and waste in infrastructural projects
Railway projects are dynamic endeavours that involve diverse groups of stakeholders who handle complex flows of natural and waste materials. Hence, there is a need to gather and organise data in an automated and digital form. Despite the advances in technology, managing construction materials and generated waste is often asynchronous with the infrastructure life cycle and still handled with decentralised and obsolete approaches, e.g. archiving of paper-based documentation. As a result, there is a loss of information, thus challenges to optimise the sustainability, social acceptance and overall cost of the infrastructure.
Excavated soils (both clean and contaminated) are the biggest source of waste in volume across the European Union which impact the conservation of mined non-renewable natural resources as well as the CO2 emissions related to transport and the costs associated with disposal. The reuse of excavated soil and, in general of mineral CDW, is often hindered by regulatory, organisational, logistic, economic, and material quality barriers.
The objective of this demonstrator is to assess and optimise the CDW reduction potential through concurrent synergies among flows of materials, data and information that the innovative technology portfolio developed in RECONMATIC will enable. The demonstration activities will aim at validating the digital information management system for CDW traceability and management by incorporating the data from the different stakeholders involved in the design and pre-construction phases of a railway project located in Italy (designers, construction companies etc.). This is chosen to demonstrate the applicability of the innovative solutions in infrastructure projects, which have design and construction differences compared to buildings. Furthermore, the novel developments in the material mapping and BIM methodology will be tested against the complexity of a real, full scale, railway infrastructure. This will enable the traceability of waste streams generated at the later stages of the infrastructure lifecycle so that the reuse, rather than the recycling or even landfilling, of CDW will be facilitated. Moreover, the optimised design methodology will also lead to a reduction of the materials required for the construction. The more accurate estimation of materials, the improved and more automated design methodology will also provide a competitive edge to the industrial partners, thanks to a streamlined, efficient and quick design process. The sustainability benefits related to the railway demo case will be ultimately evaluated through the RECONMATIC guidance tool for sustainability and circularity.
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Case railway
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Waste concrete reduction during construction phase
CZECH REPUBLIC
Automated CDW management solutions using digital twin in construction (case road)
At this moment Europe has approx. 5.5 mil. km of roads and motorways with a total asset value exceeding 8 bln. EUR, whereas the age and quality is very distinct and upgrading/rehabilitation actions are more critical. The amount of structural materials used during construction process of infrastructural projects is enormous and is embedded in the entire life-cycle of these built structures till its last stage of demolition which is and most probably will remain more usual scenario than deconstruction. Despite the modern technology era with many methods for digital data collection and data processing, waste management is still often ineffective during particular stages or sub-stages of construction and rehabilitation or reconstruction processes and in many cases it appears asynchronous. The objective of this pilot case is to demonstrate and maximize reuse of waste from existing road structures and to implement waste management into the processes of design and realising rehabilitation works for it. Some of the innovations developed in several RECONMATIC work packages will be used to demonstrate their applicability to rehabilitation of infrastructure projects. As this will be an existing built structure (road) for which there are usually no digitised models, the first step will be to create a digital twin with all relevant quantitative material and waste related information. Its development and subsequent application in the rehabilitation process will demonstrate the added value of such approach, and the digital twin will then be used for the subsequent ongoing service phase of the road. In the creation and use of the digital twin, the benefits for the mutual cooperation between the design-build contractor and the manager will be demonstrated. In addition to the procedures and tools for creating a digital twin of an existing structure (tasks 3.1 and 3.2), selected tools and applications from tasks 2.1 to 2.3 will be assessed as well. For the paving of the new structural layers, automated solutions for logistics and material delivery will be applied to minimize the generation of residual construction waste.
CZECH REPUBLIC
Automated CDW management solutions using digital twin for buildings
This demonstration case is targeting similar life-cycle phase of a built structure like demonstrator #3 focusing on buildings and not infrastructure since these two key areas of civil engineering have many specifics. Demonstrator will pilot solutions and tools dedicated to life-cycle of selected waste material streams for 1-3 different building projects – one being in design phase, one being in construction phase, one being in service/refurbishment phase, which will be the starting object from where digital twin doesn't exist and some of the recovered materials can be turned into new products either for the same building or for the other chosen in this demonstration case – depends on availability of construction projects and time scheduling. In fact, for more complex prototype within the project duration it will be nearly impossible to demonstrate it by single project. A system of steps to be done if targeting zero or nearly zero waste shall be demonstrated. As one of the specific material streams gypsum board partitions will play important role since form many office buildings this product is used and it is quite common that the fit-outs are remodelled or repurposed regularly based on tenants wishes. It is very difficult to landfill gypsum board and it is even a worst scenario. Aim is to get recovered gypsum boards and insulation materials with high purity and reuse the activated gypsum.
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Waste concrete reduction during construction phase
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Waste concrete reduction during construction phase
SPAIN
Off-site treatment of CDW and valorisation in recycled products and ECO-Aggregates
The main impact and aim of the RECSO pilot is to demonstrate the viability (technical and economic) of advanced robotic sorting solutions for the fine-sorting of CDW. This technology will act as an enabler for the commercialisation of recycled products. The robot should allow for a fraction of main contaminants (glass and gypsum) <10% in the output flow, to match the corresponding certifications. Also, as any robotic system, it should allow for a higher profitability of the company, allowing to reorient workers from the sorting cabin to other more valuable tasks. It is expected to be able to reduce by 40 % the use of manual labour in the sorting cabin, allowing RECSO to reduce the price of its recycled material by at least 5 % and thus increase its competitive position in the market. The creation of new materials with higher purity and new commercialisation streams will allow RECSO to increase their sales by 10%, and access new market sectors with higher quality requirements. Also the valorisation of segregated gypsum will provide RECSO with a market for a product that up to date is dumped.
UK
BIM tools for digitalised waste management in design and construction storage
Pre-construction material specification and design decision making along with waste management processes must be improved to minimise or avoid waste generation throughout the whole project lifecycle and allow waste to be generated in a way that can be captured and recycled efficiently. Some digital solutions are currently identified in the market (e.g. Qflow identifies material stocks and waste on site in real time) but there are more challenges for a construction company working with CDW management along different stages of the built asset lifecycle. To create a suite of tools that are synergistically interlinked by BIMs that will share common data which will be defined through the creation of a new data set (WASTEie). A repository for all waste and recycling data from manufacturers and their products (the Materials Data Bank - MDB) will sit alongside and feed a set of Prediction Tools that consider key aspects of a project allowing the effective prediction of waste generation, recycling / recovery and their resultant costs from project specific inputs. Closing this loop is a new Generative Design approach implementing ‘cutting edge’ tools from market leading design application specialists to provide accelerated insights into waste optimisation during design. This holistic approach will seek to set new benchmarks in waste avoidance, reduction, recycling and reuse through a set of KPIs set out below.
To increase the quantity of waste material that can be recovered for effective recycling from demolition, remodeling and refurbishment projects a database of manufacturer waste / recycling related data is needed. There is experience that is being put in practice currently within the EU and UK (BAMB2020, Madaster, etc.), however, a more refined and granular application must be developed to solve the industry needs. During the early stages of a project, many design decisions are locked into a project through material specification. Therefore, tools to predict the waste/recycling potential of a project would provide material specifiers and designers a further set of tools for decision making. Currently, existing platforms allow this prediction from a limited perspective, but this varies significantly from one built asset to another depending on multiple factors. Information from BIM, together with statistical analysis about historic and current construction and infrastructure activity data from the construction company would allow predicting waste types and amounts generated more accurately and, subsequently, predict what could be recovered/recycled. Once sufficient data is known about waste generation and the various waste streams we would then be able to generate cost prediction models considering the different aspects of each project. This would then allow ‘what-if’ scenarios to be run testing one proposed design/material specification against another. A set of data to describe the recyclability aspects for building materials, products and systems do not exist. A set of attributes that identifies these aspects is required
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Waste concrete reduction during construction phase
Open Days
RECONMATIC will organise several Open Days events which are planned to take place in the Czech Republic (Prague), United Kingdom (Manchester), Spain and Greece for Europe and in China, in order to engage public interest and enthusiasm for project technologies. Local communities, students, businesses and local and national authority departments outside the ones that are involved in the project activities will be invited to participate in co-design Workshops or Hackathons aiming at further exploitation of project results. This activity will facilitate collaboration and synergies with other projects and initiatives running in the city and contribute to shaping a common vision for the future of the city and its citizens.
The events will be recorded and the material will be shared on the project’s channels and the media. If you are interested in attending one of the events, we invite you to contact us and subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date with all our activities.