Technology Transferring

The rapid worldwide growth of the  construction industry during recent decades has resulted in an enormous increase in the global production of  Construction and Demolition Waste (CDW), placing an enormous strain on the environmental. The industry urgently needs to implement changes to economic policy and decision-making criteria to address this issue and to safe-guard the environment.

Some challenges to be overcome

CDW contains a complicated combination of bulky and heavy materials such as concrete (40%–67%), wood, asphalt, gypsum, metals, bricks, glass, and plastics

There is currently 850 million tons of CDW in Europe (31% of total waste generation)

The global cement industry produces 1.6 billion tons of CO2 annually (8% of total emissions)

There is 39 kg of construction waste in every square metre of building

The recent financial crisis impacted on the building and construction (B&C) sector with increased unemployment and increased pressure on sub-sectors such as construction materials, distribution channels and logistics

EU targets set for 2020 and 2050 (reducing CO2 emissions by 80-95%) create an increased need for efficient, affordable and deep refurbishment by a factor of 2 to 3 times the current rate

Deep refurbishment is difficult due to the level of time and capital investment required, and inadequately optimised technologies

Measurements Data Base

In the frame of GREEN Instruct project, a variety of products (geopolymers, fibers, aggregates, additives) are developed, based on different CDW streams (bricks, concrete, glass, plastics, wood, aluminum). All raw materials and final products are characterized as far as composition, structure and properties are concerned. In order to handle all these data, during the GI project, a measurement database has been built. According to the database design, each sample will be sorted by measurement technique, while each technique will be sorted by partner. The Measurement Database is divided in two parts:

The info part includes:

1
The Sample List (description of sample, the relevant task and the measured properties)
2
The Technique List (the techniques that are applied by each partner)
3

The folder Measurement Conditions, reporting the instrumentation and the measurement conditions (one file per partner).

The Measurement part

Contains the raw measurement files sorted by material (first level) and by measurement (second level).

The data base will be periodically updated until the end of the project and is open access to other projects and researchers. The measurement results are also available upon request at kakali@central.ntua.gr