Development of a mixed integer programming model for the optimal recycling of demolition waste

Abstract

Demolition waste ranges with an amount of about 23 million tons per year in Germany and 25 million tons in France in the same order as municipal waste. Recycled demolition waste can be reused not only in landfilling but also in road construction, in the production of paving blocks, in the manufacturing of wall blocks as well as a concrete aggregate. These secondary raw materials mainly should be used in order to replace the natural raw materials in civil engineering and underground construction. The total dismantling costs of buildings and recycling costs of the resulting materials are a function of the considered dismantling techniques, the sorting techniques, the recycling techniques and the transportation distances. Furthermore, the recycling capacities of the different reuse options may be limited in the considered geographical region. In this paper the integrated dismantling and recycling planning problem will be described and a sophisticated mixed integer linear programming model will be formulated. Different solution procedures will be analysed and due to the high complexity of the planning problem, a heuristic decomposition algorithm will be developed. In order to obtain integrated dismantling and recycling strategies for the Upper Rhine Valley (Alsace and Baden), the model will be implemented on a Personal Computer and evaluated with specific regional database.