Wednesday (Group 2) - SERDP-ESTCP - Strategic Environmental ...

Sustainable Infrastructure (SI)
Facilities Management — Facility Waste
Poster Number 71 – Wednesday
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DETERMINING ENVIRONMENTAL SOLUBILITY OF PB FROM RECYCLED
CONCRETE AGGREGATE
MR. STEPHEN COSPER
U.S. Army-CERL
2902 N. Newmark
Attn: CEERD-CN-E
Champaign, IL 61822
(217) 398-5569
stephen.cosper@us.army.mil
CO-PERFORMERS: Howard Weinick (Concurrent Technologies Corporation);
Gary Bordson (Illinois Sustainable Technology Center)
(Sorry—due to a last minute cancellation, this poster will not be presented.)
he DoD has very active construction programs under several different initiatives, including
military construction, realignment, closures, and facility reduction. Many of the structures
demolished to make way for the new construction are Cold War-era concrete buildings with
some level of lead-based paint (LBP) coatings. Under most scenarios, the debris resulting from
these demolitions can be landfilled (i.e., in a construction and demolition, nonhazardous waste
landfill) because the overall lead concentration is below Resource Conservation and Recovery
Act (RCRA) thresholds. However, this is a wasteful practice as the concrete could be reused by
the installation for many construction purposes, such as fill, road-base, or trails. Filling
government-owned landfills with concrete is also unnecessary and wasteful, especially when
considering the long-term maintenance and monitoring responsibilities associated with landfills.
For the Army, Assistant Chief of Staff for Installation Management (ACSIM) policy requires
fifty percent waste diversion for all construction projects.
The SON, to which the project responds, implies that LBP coated demolitions debris is often
disposed in a hazardous waste landfill. According to the Construction Materials Recycling
Association (http://www.cdrecycling.org/) there is a growing industry in concrete recycling.
Sometimes, construction project managers are hesitant to utilize recycled concrete aggregate
with any LBP content because of uncertainty regarding environmental regulations or effects.
This project will attempt to answer one of the main concerns voiced: leachability of Pb from the
painted surfaces into the environment.
The approach in this project is to follow a real world example—from demolition, to recycling, to
material reuse at a military installation. Researchers will characterize the construction materials
pre-demolition, sample the processed material, and then conduct an environmental leaching
experiment to replicate field conditions.
To date, researchers have: characterized the source building; sampled the crushed concrete
product; analyzed for total Pb content; and developed and tested a column based extraction
technique, designed to mimic rain events.
This work is funded by SERDP Project SI-1549.
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