Financial viability for the implementation of construction and demolition waste processing plants

Abstract

The recycling promoted by the processing of construction and demolition waste (CDW) and its production of recycled aggregate (RA), despite being a technologically known process and generating environmental benefits, still faces technical and economic barriers, which need to be elucidated and overcome, being a research gap. The research aim was to analyze the feasibility for the implementation of CDW processing plants. In the first stage, focused on technical barriers, from a wide bibliographic and documentary review, the parameters porosity, water absorption, density and resistance were identified as those that are most altered with the insertion of the RA in concrete production, determining that the previous classification and granulometric homogeneity of the RA influences the technical feasibility of its applications. Therefore, in the second stage, a case study was carried out to analyze the effects and magnitudes of costs intrinsic to the processing and viability of a plant, using data from Espírito Santo/Brazil. The main contribution was to provide instruments that support decision-making for the implementation of CDW processing plants, in order to identify that the rates applied to financing do not present significance to the total costs of the project when compared with other costs, such as transportation, promoting recycling.