Search results for " Circularity"
showing 9 items of 9 documents
The Sustainability of Reclaimed Asphalt as a Resource for Road Pavement Management through a Circular Economic Model
2019
The transition of the road engineering industry to a circular way of doing business requires more efficient and sustainable resources, energy, and waste management. The rates in which reclaimed asphalt is being recycled or reused in the asphalt mixture production process constitutes a crucial parameter in this transition. This paper aims at establishing a further step towards the combined circularity and sustainability of asphalt pavements, by introducing a framework for quantifying their Material Circularity Index. The framework is based on the methodology proposed by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and accordingly tailored for the context of asphalt pavements. This study, thus, attempts to…
Comparing the Material Circularity Index of the Italian and Spanish motorways: A case study over the Mediterranean basin
2022
Closely following the attempt of the pavement engineering industry to comply with the principles of Circular Economy (CE) while simultaneously promoting its principles, it can be detected that a significant effort is being made towards the minimization of the energy and raw materials usually utilized. In this regard, Reclaimed Asphalt (RA) is a product that exhibits a tremendous exploitation potential. Knowing that by definition CE is restorative [1], regenerative, and aims to keep products, components, and materials at their highest utility and value at all times [2], i.e. it supports the “re-circulation” of materials and energy within the same or alternative product systems and thus the e…
NATURALLY AVAILABLE SOLUTIONS FOR BUILDING NEW METABOLIC TERRITORIES
2021
Building new metabolic territories is a proactive way of responding to the challenges and precariousness of the contemporary city. Byintegrating solutions inspired by new scientific advances in urban ecology, cities are able to address some of the environmental threats. Many European cities are implementing alternative nature-based solutions to protect their health and tackle water scarcity, land consumption and climate change, to increase citizens' well-being. Wellbeing and health (Agenda 2030) are the most important analytical parameters for measuring the results and impacts of environmental project actions. With this in mind, the study presents a "nature-action" project hypothesis for wh…
The emergency of resource flow management in Palermo, Italian Capital of Culture for 2018. A proposal for a circular management integrated in its old…
2017
The present study aims at examining the gap between both the exponential openness of Palermo to the international scene, causing a wide acknowledgement of its cultural attractiveness, and itsunflappable management of city services that will face after the consequent increase of tourist andurban flows to the historical and cultural areas of the city. Our interest is especially focused on waste to be intended as resource flows in a circular management system. Compared with the other urban areas, the management of city services in the old town center is characterized by some operative issues to be faced: its specified morphological urban texture and its immaterial, psychological, and symbolica…
Integrating Circularity in the Sustainability Assessment of Asphalt Mixtures
2020
Rising concerns about the impacts that the road engineering industry is imposing to the environment have redirected national road authorities to firmly re-consider the sustainability implications of their operations. Lately, though, sustainability has established a forceful correlation with the Circular Economy and its principles. The road engineering industry, therefore, is moving towards more circular approaches. However, this is occurring without the assessment of the potential impacts of such a transition. For this reason, in this study, a composite indicator, namely, Environmental Sustainability and Circularity indicator (ESCi), for investigating the potential effects that increased ci…
Influence of Operational Strategies for the Recovery of Magnesium Hydroxide from Brines at a Pilot Scale
2022
The continuous depletion of minerals caused by land mining and the increase in their demand have pushed the development of novel sustainable technological processes for mineral recovery from unconventional sources. In this context, magnesium (Mg) has gained considerable attention for its peculiar properties and high relevance of its compounds, such as magnesium hydroxide, Mg(OH)2. In the present work, the influence of several operating conditions on the Mg(OH)2 precipitation process was thoroughly investigated by adopting a novel multiple feed-plug flow reactor. The influence of (i) initial Mg2+ concentrations in the feed stream; (ii) brine and alkaline flow rates; and (iii) the product rec…
The rediscovery of nature: the lost innocence of the digital world
2022
L’impatto della nostra impronta ecologica legata al tasso di crescita incontrollato della tecnologia digitale sta portando ad un aggravamento degli squilibri ambientali esistenti. Il digitale e i new media che fino a ieri ci apparivano una terra promessa dell’emancipazione umana, oggi rilevano enormi effetti inquinanti sulla biosfera che devono essere obbligatoriamente evidenziati. Nel contributo si intende sottoporre a indagine le cause della “perduta innocenza” del mondo digitale anche attraverso una ricostruzione analitica sui fenomeni che sino a poco tempo fa venivano percepiti come veicoli immateriali, assolutamente non invasivi per l’ambiente e dalle straordinarie potenzialità di prog…
A Top-Down Approach Based on the Circularity Potential to Increase the Use of Reclaimed Asphalt
2023
Resource depletion and climate change, amongst others, are increasingly worrying environmental challenges for which the road engineering sector is a major contributor. Globally, viable solutions that comply with the principles of circular economy (CE) are being investigated that can replace conventional asphalt mixtures in a post-fossil fuel society. The use of reclaimed asphalt (RA) is a widely used and well-established method to reduce the environmental and economic impacts of asphalt mixtures while increasing their circularity. However, RA’s market supply and demand have not yet been systematically analyzed and established. Moreover, the actual circularity potential and the opportu…
Increasing the Circularity of asphalt mixtures: Integrated Sustainability and Circularity Assessment as a progress monitoring tool towards more Circu…
2021
Sustainability and Circular Economy (CE) are two concepts that lately have been profoundly linked to each other. The road engineering industry has gradually been adapting practices that are considered both circular and sustainable. However, not all of these practices entirely consider the whole life environmental and circularity assessment and implications of asphalt mixtures.; which in turn leads to doubtfully circular and sustainable approaches. For this reason in this thesis, after analysing the ways that National Road Authorities implement and communicate CE through questionnaires and web searches, a Material Circularity Index quantifying framework, based on the proposed methodology of …