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A research team from the Sustainable Construction Engineering Group (ECS) at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech (UPC), together with the Catalan company La Farga, a manufacturer of copper products and semi-finished copper products and a leader in copper recycling, has taken part in the development of a solution to use slag from the copper refining process as new materials and to optimise the use of natural resources in industry.
Through this project, La Farga aims to valorise this slag for high added-value industrial applications, such as conductive cements used to manufacture road pavements or industrial sensing products.
Industry faces the challenge of reducing the environmental impact of its production processes while also optimising the use of increasingly critical natural resources. In material-intensive sectors such as metallurgy and construction, the valorisation of industrial by-products is key to advancing towards more circular and competitive production models.
In this context, La Farga, together with the UPC, has launched an innovative project to use slag derived from the copper refining process for cement production, with the aim of optimising the use of natural resources, assessing its potential as substitute materials and promoting the circular economy in both the copper and cement industries.
As part of the project, a process has been developed to recover the copper content present in the slag, enabling the company to reuse it. The project has subsequently demonstrated the use of this slag, previously considered waste, as new materials with properties similar to those of other materials such as clinker, aggregates or certain additives required to manufacture multifunctional cements or concretes; and which, thanks to the project, are now produced from natural resources.
The project has validated the use of these materials, which require certain properties, such as a degree of electrical conductivity that allows signals to pass through, as new sustainable materials.
Budget and Funding
The project, promoted by La Farga in collaboration with the UPC, has received support from ACCIÓ through €346,000 from the line of grants for Green R&D projects in the circular economy in the field of waste, with funding from the Agència de Residus de Catalunya. The total budget for this project was €125,000. It lasted two and a half years (January 2022 - July 2024).
Related Projects
- The Research Group in Smart and Sustainable Resources and Industries (RIIS) at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech (UPC) is developing the ZeroCarbonPave project, which aims to assess the feasibility of incorporating biochar as filler and/or as the fine fraction of granular material in bituminous mixtures, with the objective of reducing the carbon footprint associated with the manufacture and laying of road pavements.
- The Center for Industrial Diagnostics (CDIF) and the Energy Processing and Integrated Circuits (EPIC) group at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech (UPC) are participating in FLEXHYBAT (Design and control of flexible hydropower plants by hybridisation with second life batteries), a project exploring the hybridisation of hydropower plants with second-life batteries to improve their flexibility, efficiency and durability.
- The Group of Construction Research and Innovation (GRIC) at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech (UPC) leads the RESILIENT project, which develops advanced models and methodologies to assess climate-resilience strategies in buildings and optimise decision-making.
- The e-PLASCOM research group at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech (UPC) is developing a solution based on biodegradable sodium alginate and gelatin aerogels for the purification of non-potable water and desalination using solar energy.
