Demolition or Deconstruction Recycling Fabio Bruno USA implosions and demolition sites produce thousands of pounds of concrete. With strict landfill regulations and increasing fuel prices, disposing of concrete using traditional methods is not as simple or cost-effective as it once was. Rather than accept the inconvenience, FBUSA has significant experience with sorting materials for proper demolition recycling. Whether you need to tear down a building or have concrete from a previously demolished structure, you can count us to keep your project moving in the right direction. We can provide demolition recycling for two different methods of demolition. Recycling through demolition or implosion and recycling through deconstruction.
The Difference Between Demolition & Deconstruction Deconstruction is considerably way more labor intensive as it involves the hand dismantlement of potential recyclables and therefore in addition to be more labor intensive can be more time consuming than conventional structural demolition that utilizes heavy equipment, specialized attachments and recycling equipment. The goal of both demolition and deconstruction is the same, to maximize the amount of marketable recycled material generated on a project site. As the recycling rates from both conventional demolition and what is called deconstruction are generally about the same, often close to 90% of the material on a project site, the major difference between the two processes tends to be that deconstruction is usually much more labor-intensive than conventional demolition where a considerable amount equipment and technology is used.
What is Concrete Crushing? Concrete crushing is a process in which we grind concrete into gravel that you can reuse and recycle. Before our demolition experts can crush concrete, they either implode a building or can mechanically tear down the respective building using precision equipment, such as high-reach excavators with attachments. We then separate the concrete, place it in a discrete location at your site, and remove debris.
We process the concrete down to smaller pieces to remove as much rebar as possible and make it easier to run through the crusher. An excavator then loads the concrete into the crusher, which has strong interlocking teeth that smash the blocks into small pieces. After processing the concrete, we sort the pieces by size and use an electromagnet to remove metal that you can recycle or sell.
The most common types of crushers in the demolition industry include:
Jaw crushers: Jaw crushers are like a nutcracker, as two vertically oriented jaws that open and close like a mouth “chew” the larger chunks of concrete into smaller pieces. The small pieces of crushed concrete pass through the jaws, while larger pieces remain in the crusher until the pressure of the jaws break them down.
Impact crushers: Rather than crush concrete using pressure, impact crushers smash the material. The equipment might fling a piece of concrete against a hard surface, so the impact causes the material to break apart. Alternatively, an impact crusher might use a spinning rotor with a hammer to break concrete.
Cone crushers: As concrete moves toward the tip of the equipment’s cone, two internal layers within the machine crush the material into smaller pieces.
