Research Ben Maes

Abstract

Due to the large environmental impact of concrete, a high demand exists for innovative concrete technologies. In order to evaluate and improve the environmental performance of these innovative technologies, a quantitative environmental assessment method such as life cycle assessment (LCA) is needed. The majority of LCA studies are applied after the technology has been fully developed. At this stage any change made to the technology will cost a substantial amount of effort and money. It is more beneficial to perform an LCA on the technology during the development stage instead. The goal is here to predict what the environmental impact of the technology will be when it reaches an industrial scale. This can give developers insight on how design choices will impact the environmental performance of the technology. Performing such a future orientated LCA, also called ex-ante LCA, can therefore greatly help with improving the technology throughout the development process. The big challenge of performing an ex-ante LCA is making a valuable assessment on the expected environmental impact of the fully developed technology at a time where little data is available, but also to project how the world will change by the time the technology is out on the market. This project will focus on creating a methodology to perform ex-ante LCA on emerging concrete technologies, which will be applied on three case studies.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Audenaert Amaryllis
• Co-promoter: Buyle Matthias
• Co-promoter: Craeye Bart
• Fellow: Maes Ben

Research team(s)

• Energy and Materials in Infrastructure and Buildings

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Due to the large environmental impact of concrete, a high demand exists for innovative concrete technologies. In order to evaluate and improve the environmental performance of these innovative technologies, a quantitative environmental assessment method such as a life cycle assessment (LCA) needs to be performed. The majority of LCA studies are applied after the technology has been fully developed. At this stage any change made to the technology will cost a substantial amount of money and effort. Its more beneficial to perform an LCA on the technology during the development stage instead. Here the goal is to predict what the environmental impact of the technology will be when it reaches an industrial scale. Performing such a future orientated LCA, also called ex-ante LCA, can greatly help with improving the technology throughout the development process. This grants the developers insight on how each design choice will impact the environmental performance of the technology. The big challenge of performing an ex-ante LCA is making a valuable assessment on the expected environmental impact of the fully developed technology at a time where little data is available. This project will focus on creating a methodology to perform ex-ante LCA on emerging concrete technologies by theoretically upscaling the emerging technology to an industrial scale and taking into account changes to the incumbent technology and background system.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Audenaert Amaryllis
• Co-promoter: Buyle Matthias
• Co-promoter: Craeye Bart
• Fellow: Maes Ben

Research team(s)

Project type(s)

• Research Project