Implementing an innovative technology of secondary use of materials through effective recycling in situ in railway infrastructure development

Project description

Our company carries out technological projects in road and drainage construction. We perform embankment reconstructions at railway viaducts, bridges and in places which are difficult to access. A major problem in old railway lines reconstruction is adapting existing earth structures and bridges to the required parameters without the need to demolish them. Moreover, new regulations have rendered the management of construction waste extremely costly and time consuming for investors. We therefore decided to try and implement a solution we had observed in Norwegian mining operations. A new method for dismantling track systems and managing the collected material project was developed as a result of our in-house R&D work, and under the project Antex II has introduced an improved railway reconstruction service. It uses our original technology for secondary use of construction materials through effective in-situ recycling in the construction of railway infrastructure. The investment involved the purchase of equipment: tracked excavators, screening buckets, crushing buckets and haul trucks, forming a mobile clearing set for construction materials. 

This set now guarantees to our clients shorter duration of their investments in railway infrastructure, saved construction time and equipment costs, and significant reduction of the costs of demolition material disposal, while maintaining high efficiency. From the investors' point of view, these features make modernisation investments more profitable, and our offer as the contractor's becomes more competitive on the construction services market.

The innovative technology is the best solution to use in the construction of linear structures, as several stages of the works can be carried out in parallel: demolition of layers, cleaning, and unloading of the material in its destination. Thanks to this parallellity, the amount of generated waste is very significantly reduced – it now constitutes only 2,5% of the removed material.

That stands for a reduction of 774.90 tons of waste during the reconstruction of railway lines as a result of the reuse of materials through effective in-situ recycling. The project has also resulted in a reduction of CO₂ emissions by 27.4 tons per year as a result of reduced fuel consumption.