Ultra-lightweight foamed glass rocks, which are made from recycled materials and will be used for highway embankments, fall off the conveyor belt at AeroAggregates in Dunnellon.

An AeroAggregates employee prepares for the plant's grand opening in April.

Ultra-lightweight foamed glass rocks, which are made from recycled materials and will be used for highway embankments, fall off the conveyor belt at AeroAggregates in Dunnellon.

An AeroAggregates employee prepares for the plant's grand opening in April.

The future of construction technology is in Dunnellon’s backyard.

In the spring, AeroAggregates, a manufacturer of a ultra-lightweight, foamed glass product, which boasts environmental and cost-saving advantages over traditional stone-based construction materials, opened its second plant near the Dunnellon airport, east of Dunnellon.

The company opened its first plant just five years ago in Philadelphia, but the pace of demand and the company’s ongoing research into more uses for its foamed glass have it already looking toward future expansions at the Dunnellon location. The plant opened with 25 employees in April.

The property was formerly occupied by Flowmatic Systems.

AeroAggregates uses small bits of glass provided by materials recycling facilities (MRFs) – often referred to as “murfs” – which it dries, cleans and feeds through customized kilns (“ovens”). The tiny glass used would otherwise languish in landfills.

Bob Schoen, one of the founders and owners of AeroAggregates, said the company estimated it had converted around 500 million bottles of glass. He said around 70 percent of used glass ends up in landfills because of the intensive process required to clean glass for reuse.

“We use the small pieces of glass no one needs or wants,” Schoen said. “The bits of paper (one the glass pieces) are the biggest problem. It tends to fall off after it’s dried (at the AeroAggregate mill).”

As sheets of the foamed glass (“cake”) are outputted from the kiln on a conveyor belt, the outside air hitting the extremely hot sheets causes them to crack into “rocks,” which are so lightweight they can be broken by hand. However, when the rocks are compacted together, the material is strong enough to serve as embankment material under highways to prevent flooding, which is currently the main use of Aero’s product.

The foamed glass is lightweight like styrofoam, but it can’t be lit on fire and it doesn’t dissolve from gas, oil or acid, making it ideal for construction material.

Archie Filshill was working as a geotechnical engineer in Europe when he was first exposed to the technology. He was curious, so he arranged to have some of it shipped back to the U.S. when he returned home. When he started a construction company, a lightbulb went off in his head.

“I started seeing a need for lightweight fills because of all of the bad soils people were building on as they built where they never built before,” Filshill said at the plant’s grand opening.

Filshill said Florida is a particularly good fit for the technology, due to its need for flood prevention and resiliency plans.

“When the storm surge comes, our materials can actually absorb it, and it promotes infiltration back into the ground. Nobody has done this before in Florida, especially in South Florida, where it’s a really big issue.”

Filshill said the fact the technology existed in Europe, especially in Scandinavian countries, for the past 20 to 30 years helped the company sell its benefits and feasibility to engineers and the Department of Transportation. Before building its Philadelphia plant, the company conducted years of research and assembled reports to help prepare for the education campaigns that were to come.

“We call it an eight-year overnight success,” Filshill said.

Aero is pursuing larger applications of the technology, such as for counters and floors and concrete alternatives. Its lightness, fire resistance, and insulation qualities make it a candidate for more uses, but Schoen said the company has paused those pursuits until it can keep up with the potential demand. The company learned from its Philadelphia site and built more capacity into the Dunnellon location.

AeroAggregates’ biggest project to date was at the Philadelphia International Airport, which covered 100,000 cubic yards and required “quite a few mountains of material,” Schoen said.

“We’re basically sold out for the year,” Schoen said. “We don’t have a lot of material leftover, but we’re still interested in (more uses), because it’s an enormous market. It’s a good problem to have, but we have to be careful not to surprise (our buyers). We’re focused mostly on the infrastructure market.”

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