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  • A comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) of alternative material for Australian building construction

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    Author(s)
    Lu, HR
    El Hanandeh, A
    Gilbert, B
    Bailleres, H
    Griffith University Author(s)
    Gilbert, Benoit
    El Hanandeh, Ali
    Year published
    2017
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    Abstract
    The use of wood is seen as a sustainable alternative to reduce environmental impacts in building and construction sector. The low quality hardwood logs from plantation thinning are enhanced by producing engineered wood such as laminated veneer lumber (LVL). Nevertheless, engineered wood requires the use of chemicals and energy that may reduce its environmental benefits. A life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted to compare the environmental performance of LVL produced from forestry thinning and final harvest to steel and concrete. The functional unit used in this study was a 1-m-long structural beam in a continuous beam ...
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    The use of wood is seen as a sustainable alternative to reduce environmental impacts in building and construction sector. The low quality hardwood logs from plantation thinning are enhanced by producing engineered wood such as laminated veneer lumber (LVL). Nevertheless, engineered wood requires the use of chemicals and energy that may reduce its environmental benefits. A life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted to compare the environmental performance of LVL produced from forestry thinning and final harvest to steel and concrete. The functional unit used in this study was a 1-m-long structural beam in a continuous beam system of 6-m-span designed according to the Australian standards. The Global Warming Potential (GWP) and embedded energy were assessed. The results indicated that LVL beam from thinned logs presented the lowest GWP impact (5.22kg-CO2-Eq). However, due to significant energy requirements for wood drying, the embedded energy in LVL was 186.78MJ which is only marginally less than steel (216.86MJ) but significantly less than concrete (352.82MJ). LVL from mature hardwood logs had slightly higher GWP than that produced from thinning; mainly due to extra energy and materials consumption in the plantation stage. Furthermore, LVL produced from mature trees had higher embedded energy than steel.
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    Journal Title
    MATEC Web of Conferences
    Volume
    120
    DOI
    https://doi.org/10.1051/matecconf/201712002013
    Copyright Statement
    © The Author(s), published by EDP Sciences, 2017. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
    Subject
    Construction materials
    Environmentally sustainable engineering
    Global and planetary environmental engineering
    Publication URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/10072/352191
    Collection
    • Journal articles

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