Publicação
Sustainability assessment of envelope wall solutions using MAXergy methodology
| Resumo: | Since the 1987 Brundtland Report and 1992 United Nations Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, the ideals of sustainable development have been influencing the decisions made by designers and policymakers in the building industry. In the European Union building construction and operation currently represent about half of all extracted materials, one third of all waste generated, one third of all water consumed, and half of all energy consumed. This work proposes a justification for using regrowable biotic envelope wall building solutions to reduce these negative impacts and act as a more sustainable alternative to conventional wall solutions. A comparative Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) was conducted to evaluate the combined material-energy impact for adapted Netherlands straw, hemp/flax, and brick envelope wall elements within a theoretical closed loop system. The MAXergy methodology and Embodied Land Tool were used to provide a functional framework for the assessment by calculating a solution’s embodied land for a wide range of thermal resistance states, which provided a physical and realistic unit to represent a closed system’s resource capacity. The initial assessment resulted in the brick solution having an average of 17.9 times and 25.8 times more embodied land than the straw and hemp/flax solutions respectively. Depending on each solution’s inputted material and PV panel rates of change, different optimum thermal resistance conditions were found. An additional analysis was conducted to determine a better understanding of the relationship between the material and PV panel impact on embodied land. The results provide a structure for recognizing aspects such as material density, thermal conductivity, climate zone and equipment coefficients of performance as significantly influential factors that shift the optimum embodied land conditions to a higher or lower thermal resistance value. With further development including more in-depth energy simulations and absolute material details, an ideal range of criteria could be determined and applied to a wide variety of building solutions in order to achieve optimal embodied land. |
|---|---|
| Autores principais: | Cain, Tyler J. |
| Assunto: | Life cycle sustainability assessment MAXergy Embodied land tool Sustainable development Biotic materials Avaliação da sustentabilidade do ciclo de vida Desenvolvimento sustentável Materiais bióticos Engenharia e Tecnologia::Engenharia Civil |
| Ano: | 2015 |
| País: | Portugal |
| Tipo de documento: | dissertação de mestrado |
| Tipo de acesso: | acesso aberto |
| Instituição associada: | Universidade do Minho |
| Idioma: | inglês |
| Origem: | RepositóriUM - Universidade do Minho |
| Resumo: | Since the 1987 Brundtland Report and 1992 United Nations Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, the ideals of sustainable development have been influencing the decisions made by designers and policymakers in the building industry. In the European Union building construction and operation currently represent about half of all extracted materials, one third of all waste generated, one third of all water consumed, and half of all energy consumed. This work proposes a justification for using regrowable biotic envelope wall building solutions to reduce these negative impacts and act as a more sustainable alternative to conventional wall solutions. A comparative Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) was conducted to evaluate the combined material-energy impact for adapted Netherlands straw, hemp/flax, and brick envelope wall elements within a theoretical closed loop system. The MAXergy methodology and Embodied Land Tool were used to provide a functional framework for the assessment by calculating a solution’s embodied land for a wide range of thermal resistance states, which provided a physical and realistic unit to represent a closed system’s resource capacity. The initial assessment resulted in the brick solution having an average of 17.9 times and 25.8 times more embodied land than the straw and hemp/flax solutions respectively. Depending on each solution’s inputted material and PV panel rates of change, different optimum thermal resistance conditions were found. An additional analysis was conducted to determine a better understanding of the relationship between the material and PV panel impact on embodied land. The results provide a structure for recognizing aspects such as material density, thermal conductivity, climate zone and equipment coefficients of performance as significantly influential factors that shift the optimum embodied land conditions to a higher or lower thermal resistance value. With further development including more in-depth energy simulations and absolute material details, an ideal range of criteria could be determined and applied to a wide variety of building solutions in order to achieve optimal embodied land. |
|---|