Application and Development Trend of Environmental Protection Building Materials

Dear Colleagues,

The construction sector must take up the challenge of making its industrial activity compatible with environmental protection and aligned with the "circular economy" approach. Sustainable construction can be defined as a method that, having special respect and commitment to the environment, implies the efficient use of energy and water, uses resources and materials that are not harmful to the environment, is healthier and is directed towards a reduction in environmental impacts. The term encompasses not only the buildings themselves, but also the environment and the way in which they are integrated to cities. Protection of the environment entails a change in the mentality of the activity in order to prioritize the industrialization of the whole construction sequence, promoting the recycling, re-use and recovery of materials, compared to the traditional trend of the extraction of natural materials, and promoting the use of construction processes and energy systems based on renewable energies and innovative products.

This Special Issue aims to attract outstanding works that could contribute to the creation of trends for an optimal strategy to minimize the environmental impact of building construction, promoting solutions that reduce the effects that materials produce on the environment in a balanced way, that is, on the energy consumption needed to produce and install them, the waste they generate when they are manufactured and then installed on site and direct and indirect pollution that they produce. Withut being exhaustive, the possible topics to be covered by this issue are:

• The promotion of industrialized materials with an optimized life-cycle, such as precast elements.
• Materials recovered and/or recycled from the waste generated during the construction process such as: wood, asphalt, concrete, bricks, precast blocks, plasterboards, metals, gypsum, cardboard, waterproofing, plastics, etc.
• Materials with an enhanced durability and a reduced need for maintenance or rehabilitation, such as self-healing concretes, self-cleaning paints, or high-performance structural materials such as fiber-reinforced concrete, or materials with a pollution-cleaning capacity.
• Materials focused on achieving thermal comfort in buildings while reducing heating and cooling energy demand, such as phase-change materials, lightweight concretes, materials for thermally active systems, etc.
• Materials that include recycled, post-consumer or post-industrial content such as: plasterboards, acoustic false ceiling panels, floor plates, steel, concrete and cement aditions such as fly ash, ggbs, etc.
• Materials of local or regional origin, within a reasonable radius from the center of the work, in terms of the cost of transport and what this means for greenhouse gases emissions.
• Building materials that are quickly renewable such as cork, bamboo, vinyl, poplar, fast-growing pines, etc.
• Wood products that come from forests certified as sustainable farms for final elements of the building.
• Paints, primers, carpets, adhesives and insulators and composite woods without Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs).

Dr. David Revuelta Crespo
Dr. Ana Guerrero
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• construction
• sustainability
• industrialized materias
• self-healing materials
• energy efficient materials
• recycled construction materials