Mixed demolition in a cycle - an innovation

On June 8, at Eberhard Unternehmungen's Recycling Day, authorities, politicians and media representatives were given an exclusive first look behind the scenes of the processing center for construction waste EbiMIK (Eberhard - materials in circulation), which is about to start operations. An interesting tour impressively showed the size of the new center with a floor area of around 20,000 square meters as well as the six intelligent robots, the heart of the processing plant for mixed demolition waste.

Intelligent construction waste processing

The new center will process mixed demolition waste into high-quality secondary raw materials, as Patrick Eberhard explained on site. This is also urgently needed, because a functioning building materials cycle is the basis of any recycling economy.

These figures are impressive: The demolition of buildings in Switzerland produces around 7.5 million tons of construction waste per year, twice as much as household waste. The waste from demolition is made up of two-thirds concrete demolition, one-fourth mixed demolition and bulky construction waste. Today, mixed demolition waste is mostly landfilled or reused in a low-grade manner (downcycling). This is to change in the future, and EbiMIK offers a solution. With the plant in Oberglatt, the operators process mixed demolition waste into new recyclable materials. A new and efficient process technology is used.

Patrick Eberhard explains the process on the tour as follows: "First, the materials are pre-sorted with a sorting excavator and coarsely crushed with a sizer. Then two robot lines, each with three gripper arms, free the mineral materials from foreign substances such as plastic, gypsum, wood, light metals, and so on. The robots' artificial intelligence recognizes the materials via sensor boxes. A robot can sort out heavy pieces weighing up to 30 kilograms, which are not allowed for humans according to Suva and are therefore not feasible. Humans would still be better at sorting, but only for a short time. The robots ensure constant performance and reliable quality throughout 24 hours, with up to 12,000 precise picks per hour."

Next to the actual processing hall is another hall: It is the imposing raw materials warehouse, where the operator can store 60,000 tons of secondary raw materials. Depending on the application, these raw materials are additionally fractionated afterwards.

Circular concrete with less CO2 emissions

The company had another innovation in store on the circulation day: the delivery of the first cubic meter of "zirkulit" concrete marked the beginning of the age of circular concrete for three apartment buildings in May 2021. With the use of 1850 cubic meters of this circular concrete, the builder saves around 3200 tons of primary raw materials, as the company representatives calculated. In addition, the novel technology stores CO2 in the concrete, reducing the carbon footprint of the construction project by 18,500 kilograms.

Great potential

The potential of zirkulit concrete is great, according to Eberhard. Theoretically, the construction industry in Switzerland could eliminate 7.5 million tons of waste annually and at the same time store over 42 million kilograms of CO2 in the concrete. The technology is ready for the market and national expansion has been launched with the Bern-based company Kästli AG, the company says.

Martin Eberhard, CEO of Eberhard Unternehmungen: "With the new EbiMIK processing center for construction waste and the novel zirkulit concrete, we are reaching the turning point from the recycling economy to the circular economy. We are enabling the transformation into the new age of circular construction - value-preserving, resource-saving and environmentally optimized".

The new EbiMIK construction waste processing center will be officially opened on September 24, 2021.

Source: Eberhard Unternehmungen