Omer Haciomeroglu, a student from Sweden’s Umea Institute of Design, engineered a robot, which can demolish buildings, recycle and separate waste concrete, while reducing pollution and saving energy. The technology was granted with the 2013 International Design Excellence Award (IDEA) for best student design.
Demolishing a building is usually associated with dust, wasted water, wasted energy and heavy labor needed for recycling of the waste concrete and metal material. Or at least this has been the typical process until now.
A genius invention called ERO Concrete Recycling Robot, however, can efficiently dissemble concrete structures, minimizing the amount of waste and dust, while at the same time separating waste concrete from rebar and other debris.
Prior to the demolition, the robot is designed to scan the construction and plan the most efficient way, in which the heavy job should be performed. The unique ability of the robot to switch between pulverizing and smart deconstruction models, allows a full reclaim of waste material. The dust free material is carefully separated and packaged.
In addition, the water used for cracking the concrete surface is recycled and reused by the system. The clean aggregates are carefully packed and labeled, while rebar is cleaned and cut. All materials are prepared to be reused.
The main goal of the project was to provide smart and at the same time sustainable near future approach to building demolition operations, which minimizes waste as much as possible.
To quote Haciomeroglu, “What was previously waste, now turns into labeled packaged asset to be transferred right away into concrete pre-casting stations to be re-molded into new building blocks.”
Sourcing aggregates is becoming increasingly more challenging for operations in some parts of the world where leaders are reluctant to approve new licenses for quarries and sand mining. Technologies that let aggregates be made from recycling concrete materials will be a major benefit there, both by allowing new developments to be built and removing old structures that may be eyesores, or dangerous.