دانلود رایگان مقاله گیاه بر پایه LCA عناصر بتن پیش تنیده با استحکام بالا و ارزیابی اکولوژیکی عملی مختلف

Abstract

In the context of the rising awareness regarding sustainability, a Belgian producer of high-strength prestressed concrete elements for structural and civil applications aimed to clarify several aspects of ecological certifications and standards, and the application of these items within the company. In a first part of this paper, a life cycle assessment (LCA) for the precast element production up to delivery on site is presented, in which accurate company information and specific data from internal and external databases is used. The LCA determines that although reinforcing steel and cement dominate the impact contributions, other factors such as transport by road, maintenance, aggregates, element fabrication and concrete waste are non-negligible. Subsequently, a study of an ecological variant, presented in the second part of this paper, shows that several adaptions within the manufacturing process can potentially reduce the impact on the environment with 20–30%, depending on the assessment method used.

6. Conclusions

Throughout this study, life cycle assessment was used to evaluate the environmental impact of the different processes in the production of a high strength concrete element manufacturer. The rather unique close collaboration with industry allowed for environmental impact calculations that are based on very reliable information regarding the operation of an actual precast concrete plant directly provided by the manufacturer. Based on production site specific data obtained as such, the life cycle inventory was built and LCA calculations were performed accordingly. This most certainly contributed to the accuracy of the reported environmental scores. Moreover, the study provides a set of comprehensive environmental profiles for three types of commonly used precast concrete elements (beams, TT-elements and floors) which can serve as direct input for LCA studies that focus on whole buildings/ structures. The main conclusions of the impact assessment show that the reinforcing and prestressing steel (29%) and the cement (27%) dominate the impact contributions, but other factors such as transport by road (20%), maintenance (10%), aggregates (6%), fabrication (2%), and concrete waste production during fabrication (2%) are also non-negligible. A further impact study shows that the use of cement replacing materials, the use of recycled reinforcement steel, recycling aggregates from the production waste and several smaller adaptions can potentially reduce the impact on the environment with 20e30%, depending on the assessment method used.