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Biases in life cycle assessment of circular concrete

journal contribution
posted on 2024-01-04, 10:21 authored by Alireza HabibiAlireza Habibi, Omid Bamshad, Abooali Golzary, Richard BuswellRichard Buswell, Mohamed OsmaniMohamed Osmani

This investigation constitutes the fourth phase of a conceptual framework designed to produce circular concrete upon the main principals of circular economy reduce, reuse and recycle. Comparative life cycle assessment is carried out for conventional and circular concrete mixtures to identify biases in the results of common life cycle assessments. Ten midpoint and four endpoint indicators are assessed using the impact 2002+ method. In baseline scenarios, environmental performances of conventional and circular concrete mixtures are compared over identical service lifes, considering cradle-to-grave and cradle-to-cradle (closed-loop) system boundaries, respectively. Results reveal that by using optimal amounts of two industrial wastes i.e. Silica fume and ground granulated blast furnace slag, as binder materials, and recycled concrete aggregate, the environmental performance of concrete is significantly enhanced. Such condition is obtained by remarkable reduction of environmental indicators (up to 44%) at both midpoint and endpoint levels. Also, circular concrete embraces a considerable amount of Non-Renewable Energy saving (40%). Investigating the impact of different end-of-life scenarios indicates that limiting boundary conditions in the cradle-to-gate approach (lack of considering end-of-life stage) has offset the results. Furthermore, the comparison trends were completely reversed in some environmental indicators upon considering the impact of service life.

History

School

  • Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering

Published in

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews

Volume

192

Publisher

Elsevier

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Rights holder

© Elsevier Ltd

Publisher statement

This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews and the definitive published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2023.114237

Acceptance date

2023-12-10

Publication date

2023-12-28

Copyright date

2023

ISSN

1364-0321

eISSN

1879-0690

Language

  • en

Depositor

Prof Mohamed Osmani. Deposit date: 28 December 2023

Article number

114237

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