Improved selection of the functional unit in environmental impact assessment of cement

JOURNAL OF CLEANER PRODUCTION

卷:168

Article

Gutierreza, Alexis Sagastume¹  Eras, Juan J. Cabello¹  Gaviria, Carlos A.²  Van Caneghem, Jo³  Vandecasteele, Carlo⁴ 

[1] Univ Costa, Calle 50 55-66,PBX 336 22 00, Barranquilla, Colombia

[2] Univ Mil Nueva Granada, Fac Estudios Distancia, Programa Ingn Civil, Carrera 11 101 80, Bogota, Colombia

[3] Mat Technol TC, Campus Grp T Leuven,Andreas Vesaliusstr 13, Leuven, Belgium

[4] Univ Leuven, Dept Chem Engn, Celestijnenlaan 200F, B-6001 Leuven, Belgium

关键词: Life cycle assessment;    Functional unit;    Cement;    Environmental impact;   

DOI  :  10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.09.007

来源: Elsevier

【 摘 要 】

The outcome of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies is strongly influenced by the selection of the functional unit, which must be defined in such a way that, when products are compared, the amounts compared have identical utilities. LCA studies of cements mostly use mass based functional units (MFU). However, since different cements have a different composition and binding capacity, they result in different compressive strength and durability in their applications, so that MFUs are inadequate. Therefore, this study introduces as functional unit the Cement Functional Performance (CFP): mass of cement needed to obtain 1 MPa of compressive strength during one year of durability (kg/(MPa.year)). To evaluate the effect of the CFP, the environmental performance of three cements is compared. Results show that adding 5% of zeolite to cement results in a similar strength and 1.78 times higher durability of the produced concrete, which is explained by the reduction of chloride diffusion. Moreover, adding 19% of zeolite to cement increases its durability 2.75 times, but reduces compressive strength by 29%. As a result, cement with 5 and 19% of zeolite added has respectively 54 and 36% of the environmental impacts of Portland cement. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

【 授权许可】

Free