URBCON - By-products for sustainable concrete
URBCON reduces the use of raw materials and the CO2 emissions from construction and maintenance of buildings and infrastructure in cities.
The URBCON project targets the use of concrete as a building material. With the focus on the metropolitan areas of Ghent, Rotterdam and Northern France, by-products such as metallic slags and incineration ashes are used as alternative raw materials for the production of concrete. Replacing primary raw materials with by-products could save an estimated 84 million tonnes of mineral building materials per year.
The main objectives
- Development of concretes with 100% by-products (aggregate) as well as with clinker-efficient cements
- Networking of by-product providers and construction industry by means of a web-based platform for forecasting availability and considering the logistical chains underlying the construction demand;
- Testing of the concretes developed in the project (URBCON concretes) on the basis of three pilot projects (including a school building in Ghent);
- Preparation of a Strategic Technology Transfer Plan: proposals for policy frameworks, life cycle assessments, pre-normative work, economic feasibility studies.
More about the project
Visit the URBCON websiteThe City of Ghent and Ghent University are lead partners in the project, uniting 13 partners from 4 countries:
- Belgium: City of Ghent, Ghent University, ResourceFull BVBA, CWare, Kamp C and ArcelorMittal Belgium NV
- The Netherlands: Stadsontwikkeling Rotterdam, Technische Universiteit Delft, FDN Engineering
- Germany: Technische Universität Kaiserslautern, VDZ gGmbH
- United Kingdom: Imerys, University of Sheffield
The total budget of the project amounts to €5.15 million, of which €3.09 is funded by the Interreg North-West Europe Programme under the EU Cohesion Policy and financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).
The duration of the URBCON project is 54 months: from October 2018 to April 2023.