Displaying items by tag: waste

Germany: HeidelbergCement has joined EPEA’s Heidelberg Circular City Building Material Registry pilot project. The initiative uses EMEA’s Urban Mining Screening digital registry, which is able to estimate the composition of buildings based on building data. HeidelbergCement says that it will enable it to source construction and demolition waste for circular economic use in building materials production. This will support its ReConcrete 360° recycled concrete CO₂ reincorporation project, among other projects. The initiative will turn Heidelberg into Europe’s first Circular City.

“Full circular economy and sustainable construction are central elements of our climate strategy,” said HeidelbergCement chair Dominik von Achten. “We are focusing on the life cycle assessment of our product concrete, including the processing of demolished concrete, and returning it to the construction cycle. By 2030, we want to offer circular alternatives for half of our concrete products.” Von Achten concluded “Together with the city of Heidelberg, also a pioneer in the area of climate protection, we want to use the Circular City project to demonstrate the enormous potential of concrete recycling for future urban construction.”

Finland: Betolar has patented a method for producing binder from the by-products of metal extraction. The method uses metallic effluent, sludge and dregs generated by the bioleaching of ores.

Chief innovation officer Juha Leppänen said “The ability to produce new solutions for the utilisation of sidestreams is essential to the functioning of our ecosystem. Betolar has a rapidly growing patent portfolio considering its age. We have already obtained approved patents for five inventions of ours.” He added “Waste materials, such as gypsum sludge, can also be used in other construction applications which will be of great value to Betolar's business in the future.”

Indonesia: Finland-based Betolar has introduced its Geoprime reduced-CO₂ concrete technology into the Indonesian market. Geoprime facilitates the production of reduced-CO₂ concrete using industrial side streams.

Betolar head of Asia Juha Pinomaa said "The concrete industry is facing a pivotal moment in the global fight against climate change, and Indonesia is taking urgent action in changing the way cities are built. Betolar's Geoprime solution can unlock the construction industry's challenge to reduce their CO₂ emissions. It's not surprising that we are seeing rapid growth, especially in South East Asia, where urbanisation is among the fastest in the world."

Finland: Betolar has signed a letter of intent with Australia-based RISAB and the Vanadium Recovery Project to research the use of steel slag from which vanadium has been extracted in concrete production. Dow Jones Institutional News has reported that the company says that, through it Geoprime alkali-activated additive technology, the new slag source could replace 10% of the cement used in concrete production in Finland.

CEO Matti Löppönen said "We see a huge opportunity for Betolar here. If successful, we would be able to offer our customers a specific, currently unused slag of the steel industry to replace cement in concrete. Our customers already have experience in utilising other types of slag in the production of concrete using Geoprime. Utilising new side streams will expand the reach of our solution as planned.”

Betolar launched Geoprime in September 2021. It is currently developing a recipe-optimising artificial intelligence (AI) and data platform to bring together concrete producers and suppliers of slag, ash and other materials.