Since 2023, mineral construction waste has been processed into high-quality building materials at the Heinrich Feeß GmbH & Co. KG has been processing mineral construction waste into high-quality building materials in a stationary plant. The processing plant was planned and built by Anlagenbau GÜNTHER. Its key component is the SPLITTER screening technology in various versions.
The family business Heinrich Feeß GmbH & Co. KG was founded in 1951 and has its core business in earthworks, demolition and recycling. Feeß not only supplies more than 40 tested products in the field of recycled aggregates from different pasts, but is also committed to spreading knowledge about RC building materials, including in the Kirchheim/Teck Competence Center for Recycling Management, K³ for short, on its own company premises - built from R-concrete with its own RC aggregates, of course.
RC building materials are enjoying ever-increasing demand to the benefit of the environment
In recent years, the use of RC building materials in general and also the use of RC concretes in building construction has increased. All standard reinforced concrete components such as walls, floor slabs, columns or ceilings can be produced with RC concretes, not only from ready-mixed concrete, but also as precast concrete parts. The production of concrete products and fair-faced concretes in all classes is also possible.
With the construction waste recycling plant at the K³ Competence Center for Circular Economy, which will go into operation in 2023, Heinrich Feeß GmbH & Co. KG is a big step closer to its goal of achieving a high recycling rate for construction waste. The one-year planning and construction phase was intensive, as the components are exposed to high loads from the material and the end product must meet the specifications exactly.
After just 7 months of construction, the processing plant was put into operation in October 2023. After commissioning, fine adjustments were made to various units in order to further optimize the treatment process, meaning that the plant has now been reliably producing high-quality RC materials for over a year.
SPLITTER technology is the key to reliable processing
The delivered construction waste consists of large and small-grained, sharp-edged and particularly hard materials with an aggregate size > 80 mm. This requires particularly stable aggregates for processing. SPLITTER technology is predestined for this. Due to their design, the splitter shafts can withstand strong influences from material, e.g. in pre-separation. In a construction waste recycling plant, the heavy material falls from a medium height directly onto the shafts in the screen deck. For this reason, the spiral shafts in this plant in particular were provided with additional armoring for a longer service life under heavy loads.
The heart of the system is the SPLITTER technology, which is used at various points in the coarse and fine separation area. The delivered material is fed into a SPLITTER TWIN WAVE, which is used for pre-separation, via a feeding unit with apron feeder. This is a 2-fraction screen that efficiently separates the coarse material >80 mm. The spiral shafts are installed in an ascending manner so that the material remains on the screen deck for longer and is more reliably freed from adhesions.
After a subsequent FE separation, the oversize material is further treated in the downstream sorting cabin, freed of impurities and fed to a crusher, which then recombines the material with the remaining stream. The undersize < 80 mm is also freed from metallic components and transported to the next screening step via conveyor technology. This is followed by further successive separation steps using a SPLITTER FLAT for medium grain sizes of 40-80 mm and two further SPLITTER TWIN WAVE fine splitters for the small grain sizes of 15-40 mm and 0-15 mm.
To transport the material, over 334 m of conveyor technology was installed throughout the plant, which reliably transports both large pieces of rock and fine material. The material is processed in various steps to produce four almost pure fractions with different grain sizes smaller than 40 mm. These are then used as a base material for new RC building materials.
High recycling rate in the future - thanks to individually designed plant technology
The RC materials produced here are 100% recycled and have a positive impact on the environment. Compared to primary raw materials, they are absolutely equivalent and conserve natural resources.
“The new processing plant offers us, Heinrich Feeß GmbH, new additional opportunities in recycling. This includes the production of quality recycled building materials. Together with ANLAGENBAU GÜNTHER, this major project was designed and implemented precisely to meet our requirements. This brings us one step closer to our goal of achieving a high recycling rate.” Alexander Feeß - Managing Director