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Schwing Stetter: The Best Next Generation Recycling Plant
Concrete is the world’ s second most consumed material after water, and its widespread use is the basis for urban development. It is estimated that 25 billion tonnes of concrete are manufactured each year. Twice as much concrete is used in construction around the world when compared to the total of all other building materials combined.
Construction and demolition waste generation has exceedingly increased around the world to about 40 % annually. Out of which, concrete constitutes to about 80 % of the total waste. Therefore, it is necessary to recycle concrete waste to recycled aggregate and recycled aggregate concrete.
Sustainable development is focused through usage reduction of natural raw materials and consumption of recycled goods.
Recycling of slurry water is necessary to avoid ground water contamination which poses a great hazard in the ground water table. The solution to it is in recycling the concrete and the slurry water. The benefits to it are that it reduces the production of greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants by reducing the need to extract raw materials and ship new materials to long distances.
Conservation of natural resources and a responsibility towards a greener future enabled Schwing Stetter to manufacture a recycling plant, RA 12.
The use of recycled aggregates from construction and demolition wastes is showing great interest in construction because it is a huge money saver for every company, cuts down the cost on effort of transport and manpower. It conserves natural resources and reduces the space required for the landfill disposal
Concrete and its ingredients
Concrete is a mixture of cement, water, and aggregate material. Cement is made by heating a mixture of limestone and clay containing oxides of calcium, aluminium, silicon and other metals in a kiln and then pulverizing the resulting clinker. The fine aggregate particles are usually sand. Coarse aggregate is generally gravel or crushed stone. When cement is mixed with water, a chemical reaction called hydration occurs, which produces glue that binds the aggregates together to make concrete.
Concrete Washout: After concrete is poured at a construction site, the chutes of ready mixed concrete trucks and hoppers of concrete pump trucks must be washed out to remove the remaining concrete before it hardens. Equipment such as wheelbarrows and hand tools also need to be washed down. At the end of each work day, the drums of concrete trucks must be washed out. This is customarily done at the ready mixed batch plants, which are usually off-site facilities, however large or rural construction projects may have on-site batch plants.
Construction Leaders • April 2017
46 Construction Leaders • April 2017