Said industrial alterra (alterra iOS) and ECO LLC Materials have opened a floor washing of $ 40 million in southern Philadelphia that converts contaminated soils into clean aggregates for reuse in construction.
The members say that the project marks a first urban model of its idea to turn waste into material prepared for the market. “We are transforming dirty soil into clean and reusable material in the place,” said Alterra ios’s co -founder and manager Leo Addimando. “And we are doing it by reducing costs, reducing emissions and maintaining the entire local process.”
The installation, located on a plot of five hectares purchased by $ 5.75 million in June 2024, is designed to process up to 250 tons of material per hour, recovering up to 85% of incoming soils such as washing stone, masonry sand and other aggregates that comply with C-33 specifications.
A closed tie system reuse up to 95% of the washing water, helped by the capture of rainwater in the place; Eco Projects Projects The operation will divert about 700,000 tonnes of land a year from the landfills. Many urban sites require repair and the installation offers contractors a place to take damaged soil to be remedied and reused if a project requires all new soil or repair methods that cannot save the existing land.
CDE Group, a global supplier of moist processing systems, designed the soil washing process. The incoming loads are reduced and projected to remove large waste. The remaining soils are washed and separated by the size of the particles, with the trunks were rubbing the fines of the stone.
Hydrocylons and disappearing screens recover sand fractions. The clarifiers and filter presses treat the mixture of purewater, allowing most to resort to the system. According to technical documents from ECO and CDE Group materials, reviewed by Enr, this staged approach produces a range of products, from the quality of the contractor to the C-33 concrete sand, produced entirely of soils that would otherwise have been poured.
Schematic general vision of the soil washing process from a United States EPA Remediation Technology Bulletin, which shows the initial screening, the separation of thick and fine fractions, the treatment of water and recycled water loops. Image: USA EPA.
Andrew Paluszkiewicz, managing partner and director of ECO Materials Operations, said that the plant shows that circular practices can climb in the main urban construction.
“We believe that environmental construction and responsibility can, and they should go hand in hand,” he said. “Our installation shows that sustainable resources can be reused over and over again, significantly reducing dumping waste and helps to preserve the limited natural resources of our planet.”
Ecological materials also point to long -term potential in specific applications. Paluszkiewicz said to replace recycled sand with a portion of the Virgin Fine aggregate could reduce the embodied carbon. “The focus on concrete carbon content has been in cement,” he said, “but we see the potential for approaching this factor in aggregates.”
The location of the site near the exchange of Interstate 76 and Intersate 95 – and the redevelopment of the Bellwether district – was chosen for access and efficiency, explained the members. Alterra and eco Materials say that the loop traffic pattern allows more than 100 trucks a day to enter and leave without bottlenecks. Being about two large roads makes the Philadelphia plant three hours by car or less for projects with projects in New York City, Washington DC, Baltimore, Atlantic City and Trenton.
Members hope that the recovered aggregates will find a constant demand in the construction of roads, slabs work, drainage and environmental infrastructure.
The co -founder Eco Materials, Ken Griffin, a large -scale excavation projects veteran, said he helped design the business model to deal with long -term regional lagoons in both contaminated soil and aggregate supply.
If you put the repair and production of materials in the same place, he added, the plant reduces the distances of transport, decreases the elimination costs and makes recycled products more competitive with virgin stone and sand.
Addimando described the Passyunk plant as a replicable model for other metropolitan areas that face similar challenges. “This installation represents the future of construction, where sustainability and profitability go hand in hand,” he said.
Paluszkiewicz added that the visibility of the operation was intentional, with landscaped input points and transparent processing lines. “We want contractors, regulators and audiences to see how the management of responsible materials is,” he said.
Reducing waste and aggregate supply kilometers say that the southern Philadelphia installation establishes a precedent for cost savings and carbon reduction in regional construction.
