earthresQue - Centre for Rescue of Earth Materials and Waste in the Circular Economy

Informations

Funding country

Norway

Acronym

-

URL

-

Start date

1/1/2020

End date

12/31/2028

Budget

11,807,960 EUR

Fundings

Abstract

Today, contaminated soils, construction and demolition waste, slag and ash make up more than 70% of landfill materials in Norway. In addition, large amounts of clean surplus masses from construction activities ends up in deposits. This is a waste of valuable resources, landfill volume and areas. The aim of Centre for Rescue of Earth Materials and Waste in the Circular Economy, earthresQue, is to develop technologies, solutions, value chains and a regulatory framework for a more sustainable handling and treatment of waste and surplus masses. This requires a cross disciplinary approach. earthresQue will facilitate and encourage innovation through research initiated by the needs of the user partners from the construction and waste management industry, and the public sector. The centre has 25 user partners representing various parts of the value chain. These collaborate closely with 8 research partners, from educational and research institutions, on specific cases. Technologies, regulations, and economic incentives need to be developed for a sustainable handling of surplus masses and wastes. Innovation needs include methods to sort valuable from hazardous waste, new treatment processes for contaminated soil and technology to create new raw materials and products from surplus masses, better solutions for controlling and cleaning leachate from landfills, and new methods for monitoring gas leaks from landfills. System innovations that can be expected from the project include new economic criteria and tax rules to ensure sustainable business models and a circular waste sector. Other important results will be new tools for environmental documentation of technical solutions, recycled surplus masses and waste. earthresQue will give a significant boost to research, knowledge development and innovation for a more circular use of resources and areas. Obstacles for reuse and recycling are identified by a PhD fellow through structured interviews with user partners and thorough mapping of current practice. This primarily concerns legal, regulatory, organizational, and financial obstacles: Currently there are no standards for Best Practice. Experiments using concrete from demolition projects as a treatment of acid draining rocks, show promising results reducing acid drainage. The experiments take place at the study sites NOAH Langøya and Lindum Oredalen. The work also includes long-term monitoring of acid drainage from treated black shale. In another study, the leaching of heavy metals from black shale taken from a road construction project in Jevnaker was documented. PhD fellows have been hired to work with treatment of PFAS-contaminated soil and water, and nature rehabilitation/valuation of land in life cycle analyses. More fellows will be employed to work with hydrogeological and geotechnical properties of constructed geological barriers and treatment of landfill leachate. Reuse of fine-grained materials such as lime-cement-stabilized clay from construction projects or press filter residue from the soil washing plant of AF Decom at Nes Miljøpark is being tested in the lab and the field as top cover on the closed part of the landfill at NOAH Langøya. The aim is to investigate whether they are sufficiently impermeable to prevent water infiltrating to the deposited waste. We are also developing improved methods for hydrogeological assessment of locations for new landfills, e.g. closed rock quarries. The aim is to prevent water and pollution transport in fractured bedrock systems. This autumn, we tested the washing and treatment of dredged sediments from the harbour Borg harbour at AF Decom's soil washing facility. The aim here is also to separate contaminated from clean masses, for reuse of clean masses, and environmental treatment of contaminated masses. The Norwegian Coastal Administration became a new partner in earthresQue because of this case. At the closed landfill at Brånåsen in Lillestrøm, both geophysical measurements and measurements of gas emissions have been employed to map deposited waste. The aim is to estimate the remaining lifetime of the buried household waste. Results from the project have been presented nationally and internationally to both researchers and user partners. The centre has also established close collaboration outside the consortium through the stakeholder reference group, including Avfall Norge and the Norwegian Environment Agency. Avfall Norge is a central network for several user partners. Both at NMBU and BI, we are currently adapting study programs that will provide candidates with relevant competence for our user partners.