A master thesis from Aalborg University
Assessing the environmental impact of using load-bearing reused wood and seaweed insulation in a building construction
Author(s)
Term
4. Term
Publication year
2022
Submitted on
2022-06-01
Pages
57 pages
Abstract
Purpose: The production of new building materials is behind 11% of the global CO2 emission, pressuring the construction sector to seek new alternative materials to assist the sector to reduce its Global Warming Potential (GWP). Bio-based material absorbs CO2 during their lifetime which reduces CO2 emission to the atmosphere. Wood is the most common bio-based element used nowadays, however, new materials are getting attention from the construction sector, for instance, seaweed. To assist the Danish construction sector to reduce its environmental impact a comparison between a load-bearing structure using wood and seaweed will be made against the conventional concrete load-bearing structure. Methods: To assess the environmental impact of both load-bearing structures a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is conducted for 1m² of load-bearing structure made of wood and seaweed(WSW), and made of concrete and rock wool(CRW). A dynamic LCA (DLCA) approach was chosen to analyse the impact of biogenic carbon since the WSW has biobased elements in the composition. Results and discussion: The LCA analysis showed the WSW element emitting 27,78% less GWP when compare to CRW, however, it also presented an increase of 66,67% of land use impact. Significant changes in the results were presented in different LCA approaches, showing that the results are extremely sensitive to the chosen approach. This variation in the results can mislead the benefits of bio-based materials. Conclusion: For the Indirect Land Use Change(iLUC) approach, WSW showed less impact in 6 out of 7 mid-point categories analysed, only showing a higher impact in land use categories, showing that the use of more wood in the construction sector will require more land to produce more wood. On the other hand, seaweed showed a lower impact in most of the categories, however, the uncertainties about its end-of-life (EoL) demonstrated a higher impact on marine eutrophication when having protein-rich fish feed as a by-product.
Keywords
LCA ; wood ; seaweed ; load-bearing structure ; insulation ; environmental impact ; GWP ; Land-use ; water impact ; Dynamic LCA
Documents
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