Breakwater construction: An effective method for industrial waste utilization

The Environmental Protection Bureau of Taiwan established the South Star Project in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, as a solution to two problems facing the city the urgent need to dispose of industrial wastes and the need to increase land for the city. To embank land from the sea, breakwaters were constructed. The material used to construct breakwaters was a mixture of furnace slag (waste from the steel industry) and fly ash (waste from power plants). After constructing the breakwaters, the reclaimed land' was used as a landfill for construction and public waste. In the future, these reclaimed lands will be used for the development of a deepwater port or sea airport. Construction of breakwaters is a very repetitive process, and any improvements made would help contractors reduce the duration of the operation, improve efficiency in the process and thereby reduce costs. This paper discusses the process of breakwater construction and the utilization of industrial wastes for the concrete work on the project. Data collected from the first stage of the South Star Project is used in the modelling, simulation and analysis of the process, in order to examine the interaction between different resources.