Circular sheet pile sections in A16 Rotterdam

For the A16 Rotterdam, about 20,000 tons of sheet pile sections from ArcelorMittal were used in various grades from light to heavy. Half of these have now been taken out and included in ArcelorMittal's stock. These are ready to be reused in future projects. All sheet pile sections were produced from scrap metal for maximum sustainability and circularity. But there is more that makes this project special....

Construction consortium De Groene Boog called on the global market leader in steel sheet piling at an early stage in the project. "We supplied all the necessary material for the piling test prior to the project," says ArcelorMittal's Roel Bijlard. "That way, the construction consortium determined to what minimum distance from the built environment they could continue to vibrate. After all, that's faster than pressing, but produces more noise pollution. Later during construction, a noise barrier around the scaffolding was also used for additional noise reduction."

Special printing machine

To save time when printing the sheet piling, De Groene Boog turned to Dieseko, Roel knows. "So a new printing machine was built specifically for this project that can print four single sheets at a time, also from the wider 800 series of sheet pile sections. Of course, this Dieseko PVE 4240Z-800 can also be used on other projects." ArcelorMittal has supplied just under 20,000 tons of sheet piles for the A16 Rotterdam, half of which are in a buy-back agreement. "It was indeed a temporary application. Those sheet piles came back last year, so we now have another 10,000 tons of used sheet piles in stock for new projects, ranging from the AZ 18-700 to the AZ 46-700N. From a circularity and sustainability standpoint, that's obviously ideal." 

Produced from scrap metal

10,000 tons of sheet pile sections thus have a final function in the project. "Incidentally, of the 10,000 tons of profiles taken back, 2,500 tons had already been delivered used from stock," notes Roel. "So for this project we had to produce 17,500 tons new from scrap in our electric arc furnace in Luxembourg. It is currently the most environmentally friendly way of sheet piling production with a factor of 4 to 5 lower CO2 emissions per ton compared to production from iron ore in a blast furnace. A large part of the profiles were shipped by barge to our facility in Moerdijk. Here we stocked up, because we had to deliver extremely quickly. For two months, we sent twelve trucks to the project every day, spread across five racks on the construction site, mainly intended for the tunnel, sunken location and ramps. So it was quite a challenge to manage the logistics as well." 

By the way, the trucks that shuttled between Moerdijk and Rotterdam all ran on HVO 100 biofuel, so that maximum CO2 savings were achieved there as well. For ArcelorMittal, the project has now been completed. "We are now looking for a new destination for the 10,000 tons of sheet pile sections coming out of the project, so that a subsequent project can also be carried out with maximum sustainability and circularity."