Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics IBPPhotos: Inorganic Materials and Recycling
Flow diagram of the BauCycle.
Aerated concrete made of brick (behind); aerated concrete made of sand-lime brick (in front).
With the aid of electrodynamic fragmentation, waste concrete can be recycled to recover not only high-grade aggregates for the production of fresh concrete but also raw materials for cement production. Future application scenarios include recovering substances from waste incineration slag, electronic scrap and many other composite materials which cannot yet be cleanly separated into their different constituents.
Dr. Volker Thome filling the system: the flash of light or high-power pulse generated by the machine selectively separates concrete into its individual components, i.e. aggregates and hardened cement paste.
Before and after: The concrete sample, neatly separated into its various constituents. After electrodynamic fragmentation, the resulting grain fractions are dried and sieved.
Fluxana fusion machine used to produce fused discs for elemental analysis via X-ray fluorescence analysis.
Here a needle is immersed in the concrete (under water). This allows the standard stiffness, initial and final strength and penetration depth of cement paste to be measured.