HYDRASPLIT · Development of an environmentally friendly and cost-effective modular hydraulic rock-splitter system forefficiently breaking large rocks for an improved use in stone quarry extraction

In 2007 EU countries represented about 40% of global natural stone production, bringing Europe as one of world’s largest produces and exporters of natural stone. European countries like Italy, Greece, Portugal, Sweden, and Spain, are important players while other European countries are in positively growing. The European sector consisted of 60,000 companies and employing a total of more than 500,000 workers is strongly dominated by SMEs, being more than 90% and having less than 50 employees each. In spite of its leading role on the global market, Europe has been loosing power due to non-European aggressive trading competition bringing a decrease in employment of more than 15% in the last 6 years. At extraction only 20-25% of extracted rocks are accepted, meeting the requirements for being further processed into a cost-efficient product. This quantity constitutes a major environmental impact because the discarded rocks (75-80%) are considered unprofitable to process into valuable products.Within this framework, the need for a reliable and cost-efficient extractive tool is of great importance for the competitiveness of the European quarrying industry. This project is based on two patents and will involve the development of a novel cost-efficient and environmentally friendly system which exploits pressurized water to efficiently split large rocks during quarry extraction activities. The system will be designed to bring several advantages with respect to explosives and other extraction technologies, to potentially replace them thanks to its higher productivity and extracted rock quality. The system will be suitable for different rock types and could be used in different environmental and vibration sensitive areas without damaging the surrounding rock or causing excessive disturbance to the environment during the splitting operations. A prototype of the system will be assembled and tested to evaluate and optimise its performance in real working conditions.