Life Cycle Assessment for Building Materials Constituents using Gabi vs OpenLCA

Ola Diaa El Monayeri; Ahmed Tharwat Maaly; Mohamed Ashraf ElSayad

Authors

Ola Diaa El Monayeri Department of Construction and Building Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transportation, Cairo, Egypt
Ahmed Tharwat Maaly Department of Construction and Building Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transportation, Cairo, Egypt
Mohamed Ashraf ElSayad Department of Construction and Building Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transportation, Cairo, Egypt

Keywords:

Life cycle assessment, construction building materials, cement, paint, OpenLCA, GaBi, calcium oxide, climate change, acidification, eutrophication, human toxicity

Abstract

Cement and paint are two essential construction materials whose manufacturing processes contribute to air pollution and global warming leading to climatic changes. In this research, a life cycle assessment was done using GaBi and OpenLCA simulating tool to study chemical constituents' percentages impact for cement and paint on climate change; acidification; eutrophication, and human toxicity. Results showed that calcium oxide is the main raw material causing pollution in cement manufacturing. From cement charts, the lowest impacts were from the mixture that contained 71.6% calcium oxide. But, from the paint charts, the weakest impacts were from the mixture (WN- RU). These results showed that: reducing the values of the impact categories could be achieved by reducing the participation rates of raw materials with a significant environmental impact in the mixture or replacing the mix of high ecological impact with another mixture, regarding the same quality of the building material.