Economic and Environmental Optimization of Ornamental Stone Block Cutting with a 3D Algorithm

This paper focuses on finding the environmental and economic optimum block dimension for the cutting of natural stone in a limestone quarry located in Poggio Imperiale, Foggia, Italy. By minimizing the produced waste volume, the block recovery ratio was increased by protecting the profitability of the quarry. The software SlabCutOpt is a tool developed at DICAM – University of Bologna ‐ for block cutting optimisation. For this research, 10 different block dimension alternatives were analysed by using SlabCutOpt software. The results analysis indicates the highest recovery ratio can be up to 43%. The optimum block dimension was also found to be the most profitable dimension with the highest economical return. For the cutting operation of the entire block, the lowest dust emissions were achieved when extracting blocks with the diamond wire cutter, where the total dust volume was between 2.52‐0.3% of the total bench volume. When the ‘Natural Resource Waste’ criteria of Eco‐Label were considered and the 25% threshold value was applied, the block dimensions with surface areas values lower than 15 m2 were found to be suitable. For the case study, block dimensions having surface area values between 6 m2 and 14 m2 were suggested as the optimal economic and environmental solution.