To help construction companies in Italy’s Lombardy Region meet growing demand for sustainable building design, the Pietra Ricomposta project developed an environmentally-friendly composite stone material.
- 29 January 2020
The collaboration between the four companies involved will lead to the commercial exploitation of the sector’s know-how, with the possibility of growth that will create new employment opportunities and could be the subject of further research and development projects. The ERDF contribution has allowed us to carry out research and experiments and to obtain results that, under normal conditions, we would never have been able to obtain.
The Pietra Ricomposta project set out to define and develop a new type of environmentally friendly and easy-to-use composite building material comprised of recomposed stone. Using a combination of innovative technologies and sustainable materials, the project successfully developed a thin, recomposed stone with a high level of resistance. To ensure the stone was economically viable for construction projects, the project team also created an automatic industrial system capable of producing the building material in high quantities at low cost.
Efficient materials and manufacturing
The construction sector is currently undergoing an effort to ‘go green’ and become more energy efficient. As end users demand more efficiency in their homes and offices, the construction sector is responding by looking for new environmentally friendly alternatives to the use of such materials as natural stone.
However, the production process must also be sustainable. Otherwise, any efficiency gains made by using the material in the building will be negated by the energy spent creating the material in the first place.
Although natural stone itself is relatively sustainable, the process of extracting it from the ground and cutting it into slabs uses a high level of energy and produces substantial levels of pollution. Reconstructed stone is widely seen as an alternative that is both more sustainable as a building material and can be produced more efficiently. For this reason, the Pietra Ricomposta project focused on developing both a new type of composite material and a sustainable manufacturing process.
A new building material
The end result of the project was the successful development of a new building material that is environmentally friendly, both in its manufacture and its use in construction.
The resin-free recomposed stone offers a high level of resistance with reduced thickness, greater workability and better mould release. These properties reduce the risk of breakage and waste.
By using robots, the entire manufacturing process is more energy efficient. The risk of human exposure to unhealthy particles and potentially dangerous working conditions is also reduced. Furthermore, the level of efficiency and focus on sustainability offered by this process gives Italian manufacturers a competitive advantage over manufacturers operating in lower-cost regions such as Asia.
Total investment and EU funding
Total investment for the project “Integrated system for the Production of Innovative Materials for high performance reconstructed stone construction” is EUR 973 631, with the EU’s European Regional Development Fund contributing EUR 266 283 through the “Regional Research and Innovation” Operational Programme for the 2007-2013 programming period. The investment falls under the priority “New Materials”.