University of Twente Student Theses
Case study on improving the environmental sustainability in construction processes for Alma Tomingas project
Kalk, E.A. (2022) Case study on improving the environmental sustainability in construction processes for Alma Tomingas project.
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| Abstract: | Main construction contractor companies’ highest priority is efficiency and speed of construction while ensuring the safety of the construction site’s processes. Environmental health and sustainability are not yet the main goals for construction companies although the construction industry’s operations make up to 28% of global CO2 emissions. However, the emissions and environmental impact of the construction phase are often discarded and considered negligible for some existing research (Bilec, 2006). Research about construction processes and their environmental impact is rudimentary, contractor companies do not store data about the used machines and vehicles and how much emissions they generate, and not all electricity usage is recorded. Here we show that fuel-based vehicles and machines produce the largest emissions from the construction processes and the electricity production for on-site maintenance electricity consumption generates the most emissions. From the construction processes, fuel-based machines and vehicles produced 88% (127.000 kg CO2 equivalents) of the construction processes’ emissions, but the electricity production for the amount of electricity consumed during the whole project makes up to 70% of total emissions (598.000 kg CO2 equivalents). To make the construction processes more environmentally sustainable, the fuel-based machines and vehicles should be changed into electricity-based ones. There are no electrical construction vehicles available on the current construction machinery market for all construction works, only small excavators. To make the construction processes more environmentally sustainable from the main contractor’s perspective, the company should invest in buying their electricity from a renewable energy source to reduce the total emissions generated for a construction project. The results of this study show how large environmental impact construction processes have and that is done by creating a life cycle assessment (LCA), which is the method to measure the environmental impacts associated with a given product or process, in this case, the construction project Alma Tomingas. Each vehicle and machine and its fuel consumption and work duration on the construction project are measured and translated into emissions generated by each process. The diesel-based machines and vehicles' direct CO2 emissions are calculated and for electricity-based machines, the amount of electricity required to produce is translated to kilograms of CO2 equivalents by the GaBi software. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Bachelor) |
| Faculty: | ET: Engineering Technology |
| Programme: | Civil Engineering BSc (56952) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/93565 |
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