At this time, nearly 100% of the tunnel excavation material is put into landfills. The EU project aims to reuse this material as a valuable mineral resource in other industrial production cycles. For example, next year about 800 million tonnes of mineral resources will arise Europe-wide in the course of building tunnels, subways or underground power plants, which might potentially be supplied to the brick, steel or glass industry for sensible reuse.
A system is to be developed in the DRAGON project, which performs an automated online analysis of the excavation material, then separates this material, respectively depending on quality, to then have it be reused. The above-mentioned technologies are to be integrated as part of a tunnel-drilling machine. The project results will contribute to entirely eliminating "waste products" from tunnel construction where possible in the future.
The DRAGON project is coordinated by Univ. Prof. Robert Galler with the Industrial Liaison Department providing the project management.
DRAGON is funded under the 7th EU Research Project Programme (with focus on the environment).
PROJECT DATA
Title: Development of Resource-efficient and Advanced Underground Technologies
Instrument: FP7-ENV, Collaborative project
Overall costs: € 4,554,771
EC funding: € 3,243,659
Project period: 36 months
Project start: 01/10/2012
Project coordinator: Montanuniversität Leoben (AT)
Project partners:
- PORR Bau GmbH (AT)
- Herrenknecht AG (DE)
- B+G Betontechnologie + Materialbewirtschaftung AG (CH)
- Jacques Burdin Ingenieur Conseil (FR)
- PE North West Europe Limited (UK)
- Indutech instruments GmbH (DE)
Contact:Mag. Karin Rehatschek
T: +43 3842 402 8411
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement No 308389
