Contaminant Transfer and Environmental Technologies

Characterisation of waste: automated test-rig für column percolation

The material input to the German economy was 1688 million tons in 2008. The stock of goods increased by 637 million tons. 256 million tons were dissipated in the environment while 388 million tons were exported. Further 1083 million tons of oxygen were extracted from the atmosphere resulting in 1490 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions. That is not all. There are another 2229 millions tons unused extraction. This is called the “Ecological Rucksack”. Beside material use there is land consumption for housing and traffic areas amounting to 104 hectare per day in the year 2008.

In their strategy for sustainable development the German government defined the goal to double resource productivity, i.e. the relation of gross national product and material consumption by the year 2020 (reference 1994) and to reduce land consumption to 30 hectare per day. This would also lead to a lighter Ecological Rucksack. It is possible to reach the goals if waste is avoided or at least recycled to secondary raw materials and if contaminated sites and brown fields are remediated. New landfills cannot be completely avoided. However, they have to be constructed and operated safely and environmentally compatible. The division addresses these topics with research and development, testing, analysis and approval and cosultion and information.

• Assessment of soil and groundwater contamination
• Plastics in geotechnical and geoenvironmental engineering
• Waste treatment and recycling processes

Our main activities

• Soil contamination with respect to environmental properties and standards
• Technical barriers for groundwater protection (contaminant transfer and material durability in liners)
• Mechanical processes for waste treatment
• Longterm performance of geosynthetics
• Evaluation of soil and groundwater remediation processes
• Semi-technical production of reference materials derived from soil and mineral waste

Research on the above subjects helps to support the preparation and evaluation of technical standards and legislative statutory regulations

Research projects

The aim of the SUFFOS project (Conditions of suffosive erosion phenomena in soils), which is supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG), is to study suffosion processes in gradated soils. For details see www.suffos.bam.de.

Photovoltaic waste materials are processed in the "RESOLVED" EU project using wet mechanical technology and valuable material components are recovered (see also www.resolved.bam.de).

In the EU Life Environment Demonstration Project "RECDEMO: Complete utilization of the sand fraction from demolition waste recycling" the processing and the recycling of processed concrete crushed sand has been investigated as concrete aggregate. See www.recdemo.bam.de for further information.

The division has participated with other European partners in the "PEREBAR, Long term performance of permeable reactive barriers used for the remediation of contaminated groundwater" EU project. See www.perebar.bam.de for more information.

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