The European ICEBERG project faces its last year of activity with all case studies in progress
Bilbao, May 5, 2023. The ICEBERG Project in which 35 public and private organizations from ten European countries are involved, faces its last working year with important advances in the recycling of construction materials, new scientific publications and patents in progress.
The Netherlands hosted on 17, 18 and 19 April the general assembly of member entities that served to present the progress achieved in these three years and to review the work performed in the six case studies and in the different areas of activity. As leader of work package 2 focused on the development of new recycling technologies, LENZ INSTRUMENTS has completed the development of a pilot scale sorting line to separate construction and demolition waste into different streams, i.e, concrete, ceramics and impurities (gypsum, wood, paper, etc). The developed system allows processing up to 10 tons per hour of input material, and achieves a sorting accuracy over 95%, thus enabling an effective separation of mixed stony fractions as a previous step before the manufacturing of recycled products.
The meeting also served to show the new EU scientific officer for the follow-up of the project, Laura Petrov, evidences of the progress achieved. In this sense, during the general assembly, one of the case studies coordinated by GBN Groep was visited, which is mainly being developed in the Netherlands, at the recycling facility of GBN in Hoorn, around the circularity of concrete. New technologies developed within the ICEBERG Project have allowed to implement a pilot experience that has managed to separate fine aggregates of cement paste from concrete. Thus, aggregates can be used again in new mortars, concretes, asphalt or unbound applications, and the cement part returns to the cement plant for the manufacture of clinker, a key material in the elaboration of the cement.
The European project ICEBERG – acronym of Innovative Circular Economy Based solutions demonstrating the Efficient recovery of valuable material Resources from the Generation of representative End-of-Life building materials – is funded by the European Union within the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (contract 869336), and suggests addressing the circularity of the most commonly used materials in construction, from the recovery and recycling of construction and demolition waste (CDW) to the development of more sustainable products.
The aim is to design, develop and validate innovative reuse systems and technologies, which allow to produce high value recovered materials –low level impurities (less than 8%)– and reliable. The industrial-scale validation will be performed through six case studies in different locations in Europe, thus covering the circularity of concrete, ceramics, wood, plaster, insulating foams and superinsulating materials. This is also intended to improve the reliability and acceptability of recycled materials from waste from the construction sector.
