TECNALIA RESEARCH & INNOVATION is since 2011, a benchmark Research and Technological Development Centre in Europe that aims to transform the technology into GDP. Ranked no. 12 out of 22,000 European organisations (2,400 rec), is the 1st Private organisation in Spain in project contracting, participation and leadership under the EU Horizon 2024 Programme, and currently the second Spanish private organisation in European patent applications, with an outstanding success ratio of 95% regarding EPO/PCT applications granted. TECNALIA is a multi-sectoral and multi-tecnology Research Centre, with 1407 people in staff working in 6 interconnected business divisions: Building Technologies, Energy and Environment, ICT, Industry and Transport, Lab services, and Health.

TECNALIA’s main contribution to FISSAC is focused on the investigation, design and elaboration of green concretes, based on several industrial secondary raw materials and new cements, and their evaluation and monitoring of their technical and environmental performance.

Ecodek was founded in 2002 as a manufacturer of wood-plastic composites (WPC).  Ecodek is the UK leading manufacturer and supplier of eco-friendly natural fibre polymer composites, and the UK’s longest established and largest WPC profile manufacturer.  Their focus is to supply high-quality natural fibre polymer composite products that exactly match industry needs, by synergistically blending polymers and natural fibres from recovered plastics and hardwood fibres.  The WPC manufacturing site is located in Wrexham, North Wales, UK and has a broad customer base from new build housing, social housing and trade.  The business has developed a significant amount of know-how in the formulation and use of WPC materials and plans to expand the use of these materials in additional applications.  Ecodek merged with Epwin from November 2015, creating Specialist Building Products Limited trading as Ecodek.  Epwin is a manufacturer of extrusions, mouldings and fabricated low maintenance building products, supplying the RMI, new build property and social housing sectors.  It is best known in the construction market for its market-leading window systems businesses (Profile 22 and Spectus) and its roofline businesses (Swish Building Products, Kestrel, Kayflow and Stormking). 

Rina Consulting S.p.A. (formerly D’Appolonia S.p.A.), part of the RINA Group, is the largest fully independent Italian firm providing consulting and engineering services to clients belonging to both the public and the private sector. The company operates in the markets of Energy, Transport and Infrastructures, Industry and Investor Support. With a staff of about 1,000 engineers, consultants, designers, planners and specialists, and offices located in 20 countries worldwide, Rina Consulting supports clients from concept to decommissioning, through consultancy, design, management, operation and maintenance.

Within the FISSAC project, Rina Consulting is mainly involved in the development of the ICT Platform, the validation of the FISSAC model, the evaluation of its replicability, as well as in the organisation of the Italian Living Labs.

The Association of Cities and Regions for sustainable Resource management (ACR+) is an international network of cities and regions sharing the aim of promoting a sustainable resource management and accelerating the transition towards a circular economy on their territories and beyond. Circular economy calling for cooperation between all actors, ACR+ is open to other key players in the field of material resource management such as NGOs, academic institutions, consultancy or private organisations.  In the last 20 years, ACR+ has been continuously working on developing and promoting the expertise of public authorities in effective waste-product-resource policies, as well as encouraging practical action. ACR+ involves local & regional authorities covering very diverse territorial realities (densely or sparsely populated, inland or coastal areas, islands, etc.), valuable both as a source of expertise & as replication areas. ACR+ has a large experience in supporting the transition of cities and regions towards resource efficiency, including territories of smaller size and means.

The FISSAC team is excited to feature in the last newsletter the five real scale demonstrations developed by the project. Before delving into the demos‘ details, let’s take a step back to discover what brought us to these outstanding results. In the picture above, you can see the supply chain implemented by the project partners.

Each material is the result of a symbiosis process established among different industries. The case studies developed four innovative materials and construction products with reduced carbon footprint: eco-cement, green concrete, ceramic tiles and wood-plastic composites. They have been tested in laboratory and at pilot scale, from the technical and environmental point of views. Once all the verifications fulfilled the quality requirements, the solutions have been implemented at real scale.

Now we can dive into the five demos:

1. Concrete pavement in Adana – Turkey
The concrete pavement of a road was produced from the eco-cement developed within the project. The demo has implemented a circular process of giving a new life to waste materials (steel slag, aluminum oxide-based products from aluminum salt slags, and ceramic waste). The road was successfully tested to comply with heavy vehicles traffic.

Find out more about this demo on the FISSAC website.

2. Autoclaved aerated concrete blocks (building wall) in Izmir – Turkey
Autoclaved aerated concrete (AAC) blocks were manufactured at industrial scale, with standard dimensions in order to build a wall.

The AAC wall blocks were produced by using ceramic waste, electric arc furnace (EAF) slag, and ladle furnace slag (LF) as secondary raw materials supplied by regional providers in order to ensure the replicability.

Find out more about this demo on the FISSAC website.

3. Precast concrete elements (pavement and New Jersey) in San Sebastián de los Reyes, Madrid – Spain
The precast pavement elements were installed at Acciona’s Demopark surrounding two building modules. These elements were manufactured using the new FISSAC blended eco-cement produced in Turkey as cement base and EAF (Electric Arc Furnace) slags (low alloy common iron production) as coarse aggregates.

Find out more about this demo in the section on the FISSAC website.

4. Eco-wall and eco-porcelain tiles in San Sebastián de los Reyes, Madrid – Spain
The tiles were manufactured thanks to the industrial symbiosis between two different industries, in the field of natural stones and ceramic tiles. The new FISSAC tile includes a relevant amount of secondary raw materials as a component of the ceramic body, which have been conceived and manufactured according to eco-design criteria.

The innovative material has been installed in the Acciona Demopark in San Sebastián de los Reyes, Madrid, Spain.

Find out more about this demo on the FISSAC website.

5. Innovative Wood Plastic Composites in San Sebastián de los Reyes, Madrid – Spain
The demonstration activity deals with three different applications: decking, fencing and cladding. In the industrial process, recycled wood and plastics have been used as alternative polymers (based on the previous FISSAC pre-industrial studies).

On 28 and 29 November 2019, Acciona, as project coordinator, organised the 9^th FISSAC General Assembly among its premises in the north of Madrid.

The two-day meeting focused on the various innovative results reached by the FISSAC project in the last four years. Future activities have been discussed, in particular regarding the replicability of the project and the organisation of the FISSAC Final Conference, which will take place on 29 January 2024 in Brussels.

Furthermore, Acciona organised a study visit of the Demopark located in San Sebastián de los Reyes. For already several months, the Acciona Demopark is hosting the installation of new FISSAC materials: the precast concrete elements, the eco-wall and eco-porcelain tiles, and the wood-plastic composites.

Read more.

Third FISSAC webinar on pre-industrial and industrial scale demonstrations

On 15 October 2019, FISSAC hosted its third webinar, which focused on the results of the four pilots and the five case studies implemented during the project. During the webinar, the partners in charge of the demonstrations presented the new supply chains generated by the collaboration and the industrial symbiosis of different companies. The last section of the webinar highlighted the point of view of local authorities and the opportunities that industrial symbiosis can generate also for the public sector.The recording of the webinar is still available online.

The FISSAC project presented at Ecomondo

The FISSAC project has been presented at ECOMONDO on 8 November 2019, in Rimini (Italy) as an innovative example of circular economy and industrial symbiosis in the construction value chain. In particular,  the FISSAC demonstrations have been illustrated by ACR+ during the conference “European research and innovation for the implementation of circular economy and bioeconomy”. FISSAC was also disseminated by another partner, RINA, during the whole duration of the event.