About the project
The RUB2RES project aims to lay down comprehensive guidelines for improving the management and exploitation of Construction & Demolition Waste (C&DW), developing innovative and sustainable products and sorting processes, readily transferable to industry. The project deals with post-earthquake Construction & Demolition Waste (C&DW) collected from Marche, Abruzzo and Emilia-Romagna (Italy), as a challenging case study for the management and recovery of an extremely heterogeneous and potentially hazardous mineral composite. About 2.7 million tons rubbles have been estimated as generated by the 2016-2017 seismic events in Central Italy. The impact of this problem is exemplified in the Figure below.​​​
On the left, a pile of post-earthquake rubble at the COSMARI public plant (Tolentino, Marche, Italy) after first processing by hand picking removal of metals, woods, plastic, etc. At this stage, the C&DW has virtually no value and COMARI must pay a company to collect the material for disposal or further use. On the center, the C&DW at a company after crushing and size-sorting. The company also collects from privates doing demolition work in the ongoing reconstruction phase. The company is facing trouble with marketing this material due the extreme heterogeneity (detail on the right) because of the lack of confidence by the architectural designers and structural engineers on recycled aggregates with composition variable in space and time. This invariably leads to downcycling (backfilling) while the finest fractions of materials visible on the left image are landfilled.
In the current industrial practice, the mineral fractions are commonly crushed, sorted (sieved) and stocked as a function of grain-size ranges, irrespective of their material attributes. However, C&DW are heterogeneous mixtures of solid particles with variable chemistry, mineralogy, and texture, as well as distinct colour, density, tenacity, etc. This heterogeneity is even more cogent for earthquake-derived C&DW, being a function of the geographic provenance and related geological, architectural, and historical features.
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This project combines the most advanced Earth Science analytical methods with engineering practices in order to: i) enable fast and reliable classification and sorting technologies; ii) calibrate the remote-sensing tools for unmanned first assessment of post-disaster rubble; iii) provide technical guidelines for the definition of EU recommended material passport of C&DW; iv) overcome the present limitations of C&DW aggregate recycling in concrete by an expert system homogenisation approach; v) test the upcycling of the C&DW fines, that today end up in landfilling, for recycle in a wide range of applications, including preparation of new building materials and environmental remediation. Dissemination initiatives are also foreseen, targeting the scientific, industrial and stakeholder community, as well as the general public. Training activities are also planned (schools, seminars and demonstration events for students and PhD students).
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Starting date: 28/09/2023
Expected conclusion: 27/09/2025
Fundings MUR: 88.570 €
Fundings UniFe: 21.601 €