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Sustainable Construction: Environmental Evaluation of Construction and Building Materials

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A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Materials".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (1 March 2023) | Viewed by 14492

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Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Seungjun Roh

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

School of Architecture, Kumoh National Institute of Technology, Gumi 39177, Republic of Korea
Interests: building life cycle assessment; sustainable building construction; sustainable construction material; sustainable concrete; sustainable construction management

Dr. Tae-Hyoung Kim

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Department of Living and Built Environment Research, Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Building Technology, Goyang 10223, Korea
Interests: recycling of construction waste; building dismantling and demolition; sustainable construction material; sustainable concrete; construction material life cycle assessment

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

With the rising importance of sustainable development, efforts have been made in the construction industry to reduce the environmental impacts of construction and building materials. To effectively reduce environmental impact, it is very important to quantitatively evaluate the environmental impact caused by construction and building materials, and related theoretical, practical, and technical research is actively being conducted along with the operation of certification in various countries.

The present Special Issue will address various issues associated with the environmental evaluation of construction and building materials and contribute to the development of a sustainable construction industry. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to the following:

Environmental evaluation of sustainable construction and building materials
Advanced environmental evaluation technology for construction and building materials
Environmental product declaration of building materials
Carbon footprint of building materials
Environmental impacts of structure using recycled materials
Sustainable supply chain for building materials
Practical issues in sustainable construction and building materials
Emerging issues in sustainable construction and building materials

This Special Issue welcomes theoretical, reporting, strategic, practical, and review papers.

Thank you for your contributions.

Prof. Seungjun Roh
Dr. Tae-Hyoung Kim
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

sustainable construction
sustainable buildings
sustainable building technology
sustainable building materials
sustainable concrete
recycled materials
life cycle assessment
environmental impacts
environmental product declaration
carbon footprint
CO2 emissions

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

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17 pages, 3649 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Environmental Sustainability of Bricks in an Emerging Economy: Current Environmental Hotspots and Mitigation Potentials for the Future

by Kamrul Islam, Masaharu Motoshita and Shinsuke Murakami

Sustainability 2023, 15(6), 5228; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15065228 - 15 Mar 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2823

Abstract

Clay-fired bricks are widely used in emerging economies mainly because of the unavailability of higher-grade construction and building materials; however, they are associated with significant social and environmental damage. The environmental burdens associated with the fuels and materials required for brick production are huge, as they have both direct and indirect effects along supply chains. This study aimed to assess the environmental footprints of brick production along supply chains, focusing on relevant environmental issues in brick production: carbon dioxide emissions, water consumption, and land use. We demonstrate that fuelwood consumption constitutes a major share of the carbon and water footprints, whereas built-up land for brick drying dominates the major effect of land use. Our expansion of the ecological footprint method enables a comparison of the effects of three different environmental issues with the same land area dimension, which reveals the relative severity of carbon dioxide emissions that account for up to 20% of the national CO₂ inventory. For the potential reduction in the environmental footprint of brick production, scenario analysis showed a substantial reduction by replacing clay-fired bricks with concrete bricks. The shift to alternative materials, together with mitigation measures for brick production, can effectively alleviate the environmental pressures of construction materials in future emerging economies. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Construction: Environmental Evaluation of Construction and Building Materials)

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18 pages, 4133 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Establishment and Utilization Plans of Apartment Housing Envelope System Database

by Jong-Geon Lee, Hyeong-Jae Jang, Sungho Tae and Yonghan Ahn

Sustainability 2022, 14(8), 4859; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14084859 - 18 Apr 2022

Viewed by 1509

Abstract

Recently, apart from the energy saving of new buildings, various carbon-centered environmental policies for climate change were implemented to improve the energy performance of existing buildings, actively promoting green remodeling businesses. This study proposed a classification system for green remodeling envelope systems to select the applicable representative method and input material for the green remodeling of apartment housing. The system boundaries were divided into the material production stage and construction waste processing stage, and the classification system of the envelope system was implemented for applicable green remodeling. A database for the environmental, economic, and energy performances of the classification system was created. Moreover, a green remodeling evaluation sheet system was proposed. According to our results, the economic, energy, and environmental performances of the proposed combinations of the insulation systems were higher than those of the reference combination by 30%, 10%, and 30%, respectively. Regarding the window systems, the economic and energy performances of the proposed input material combinations were higher than those of the reference combination by 22% and 10%, respectively. Additionally, the energy performance of the proposed input material combinations was higher than that of the reference combination by 8~64%. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Construction: Environmental Evaluation of Construction and Building Materials)

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22 pages, 3241 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Effects of Using Green Concrete Materials on the CO₂ Emissions of the Residential Building Sector in Egypt

by Heba Marey, Gábor Kozma and György Szabó

Sustainability 2022, 14(6), 3592; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14063592 - 18 Mar 2022

Cited by 22 | Viewed by 3518

Abstract

Increasing the rate of construction material consumption has caused significant environmental problems in recent decades, especially the production of ordinary Portland cement (OPC), which has been associated with 8% of the world’s human CO₂ emissions and is considered the leading binder of concrete. This study aims to investigate the effects of substituting conventional concrete (CC) material with green concrete (GC) in the non-structural concrete works of a residential building in New Borg El-Arab City, Egypt. It attempts to establish what the effects are of using GC on cement, natural aggregates, and CO₂ emissions in the design phase. By using a design-based solution (DBS), we began with redesign, reduce, reselect, reuse, and recycle strategies to find an optimal solution for applying recycle aggregate concrete (RAC) as a replacement material in selected building parts, such as the internal floor, external sidewalk, entrance steps, and wall boundary. AutoCAD software and 3Dmax were used to modify the original design and obtain two design references with four different scenarios. Comparative analyses were applied to investigate the effects of different concrete materials. The results show a reduction of about 19.4% in cement consumption in terms of the total concrete of the building and a 44.5% reduction in CO₂ emissions due to the reduction of cement in specific building parts. In addition, this solution decreased natural coarse aggregate (NCA) consumption by 23.7% in the final concrete. This study recommends that GC materials close the loop of cementitious material consumption to reduce environmental impacts and achieve sustainability in the Egyptian building sector. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Construction: Environmental Evaluation of Construction and Building Materials)

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13 pages, 1912 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Modified Harmony Search Algorithm-Based Optimization for Eco-Friendly Reinforced Concrete Frames

by Gebrail Bekdaş, Sinan Melih Nigdeli, Sanghun Kim and Zong Woo Geem

Sustainability 2022, 14(6), 3361; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14063361 - 13 Mar 2022

Cited by 9 | Viewed by 1785

Abstract

Cost and CO₂ are two factors in the optimum design of structures. This study proposes a modified harmony search methodology for optimization of reinforced concrete beams with minimum CO₂ emissions. The optimum design was developed in detail by considering all possible combinations of variable loads, including dynamic force resulting from earthquake motion. Moreover, time-history analyses were performed, and requirements of the ACI-318 building code were considered in the reinforced concrete design. The results show that the optimum design based on CO₂ emission minimization is greatly different from the optimum cost design results. According to these results, using recycled members provides a sustainable design. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Construction: Environmental Evaluation of Construction and Building Materials)

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Review

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30 pages, 2439 KiB

Open AccessReview

Life Cycle Environmental Sustainability and Energy Assessment of Timber Wall Construction: A Comprehensive Overview

by Rabaka Sultana, Ahmad Rashedi, Taslima Khanam, Byongug Jeong, Homa Hosseinzadeh-Bandbafha and Majid Hussain

Sustainability 2022, 14(7), 4161; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14074161 - 31 Mar 2022

Cited by 15 | Viewed by 3823

Abstract

This article presents a comprehensive overview of the life cycle environmental and energy assessment for all residential and commercial constructions made of timber walls, globally. The study was carried out based on a systematic literature analysis conducted on the Scopus database. A total of 66 research articles were relevant to timber wall design. Among these, the residential construction sector received more attention than the commercial sector, while the low-rise construction (1–2 stories) gained more attention than high-rise construction (>5 stories). Most of these studies were conducted in Canada, Europe, Malaysia, and the USA. In addition, the end-of-life phase received limited attention compared to upstream phases in most of the studies. We compared all environmental and energy-based life cycle impacts that used “m²” as the functional unit; this group represented 21 research articles. Global warming potential was understandably the most studied life cycle environmental impact category followed by acidification, eutrophication, embodied energy, photochemical oxidation, and abiotic depletion. In terms of global warming impact, the external walls of low-rise buildings emit 18 to 702 kg CO₂ kg eq./m², while the internal walls of the same emit 11 kg CO₂ kg eq./m². In turn, the walls of high-rise buildings carry 114.3 to 227.3 kg CO₂ kg eq./m² in terms of global warming impact. The review highlights variations in timber wall designs and the environmental impact of these variations, together with different system boundaries and varying building lifetimes, as covered in various articles. Finally, a few recommendations have been offered at the end of the article for future researchers of this domain. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Construction: Environmental Evaluation of Construction and Building Materials)

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