GREEN CONSTRUCTION AND RENOVATION

Abstract

The seminar gave an outlook to the concept of green engineering and its principles. The applications of green concept in civil engineering and the concepts of green technology are highlighted. Green Building and its features are demonstrated. The research on the literature of green building and sustainable building are outlined. The seminar focused on the practices towards green building using environmental friendly materials. The green practices overviewed included the use of natural structural materials, natural insulation materials, replacing the cement and/or aggregate by waste materials, using plant fibers as cement reinforcement, using pioneering new technologies like nano-engineering technology, smart glass and geopolymers in green building construction. Downsides to green building are interpreted and conclusions about what is presented are elucidated.

Full text

GREEN CONSTRUCTION AND
RENOVATION
Prof. Dr. Ibtisam Kamal
Faculty of Engineering - Department of Civil & Chemical Engineering
Soran University
Online Seminar, Tuesday 21st April 2020, 7:30 pm

Outlines
•Introduction to Green Engineering
•Principles of Green Engineering
•The Applications Of Green Concept in Civil Engineering
•The Concepts of Green Technology
•Green Building
•Features of Green Building
•Research on the Literature of Green Building
•Types of Green Construction Materials
•Downsides to Green Building
•Conclusions
.

What about the concept (GREEN) in Engineering?
Green Engineering
Green Engineering focuses on the design of materials, processes, systems, and
devices with the objective of minimizing overall environmental impact
(including energy utilization and waste production) throughout the entire life
cycle of a product or process.
Green Engineering help to balance the need to improve quality of life while
maintaining the health of humans and the environment.

The Discipline Of Green Engineering
innovative answers to questions
about how we can deploy scientific and
engineering understanding to challenging and
complex sustainability problems that have
emerged as the result of technological advances.
To make commercialization greener we need a set of principles to
follow. This led to the development of the 12 Principles of Green
Engineering

No.
Engineering
Principles
Meanings
1
Inherent Rather
Than Circumstantial
.
All materials and energy inputs and outputs are as inherently nonhazardous as
possible
2
Prevention Instead
of Treatment
Prevent waste than to treat or clean up waste after it is formed .
3
Design for
Separation
Separation and purification operations should be designed to minimize energy
consumption and materials use.
4
Maximize Efficiency
Products, processes, and systems should be designed to maximize mass,
energy, space, and time efficiency.
5
Output-Pulled
Versus Input-
Pushed
Products, processes, and systems should be "output pulled" rather than "input
pushed" through the use of energy and materials.
6
Conserve
Complexity
Embedded entropy and complexity must be viewed as an invest ment when
making design choices on recycle, reuse, or beneficial disposition.
7
Durability Rather
Than Immortality.
Targeted durability, not immortality, should be a design goal
8
Meet Need,
Minimize Excess
Design for unnecessary capacity or capability (e.g., "one size fits all") solutions
should be considered a design flaw.
9
Minimize Material
Diversity.
Material diversity in multicomponent products should be minimized to promote
disassembly and value retention
10
Integrate Material
and Energy Flows
Design of products, processes, and systems must include integration and
interconnectivity with available energy and materials flows.
11
Design for
Commercial
"Afterlife"
Products, processes, and systems should be designed for performance in a
commercial "afterlife."
12
Renewable Rather
Than Depleting
Material and energy inputs should be renewable rather than depleting.
The 12 Principles of Green Engineering by Paul Anastas and Julie Zimmerman, 2003

Green Civil Engineering & Potential
Topics

Green civil engineering
Managing, designing, constructing and maintaining the built and natural environment, using
technologies and techniques that provide services to society, while working within the carrying
capacity of local ecosystems and the planet.
This aim green civil engineering
Developing new environmentally friendly, safe, and nontoxic materials, smart monitoring
techniques, and their based innovative technologies.
The use of (clean technology) can reduce the amount of waste and pollution.
Potential topics of green civil engineering
•Green energy/renewal energy
•Green building/infrastructure
•Assessment and monitoring of building/infrastructure/environmental safety
•Digital monitoring technologies
•Green remediation/treatment

The concepts of green technology

The concepts of green technology deal with technological researches and studies
to reduce the environmental and climate change impact of the unfriendly
industries and enterprises and global warming on human health, environmental
safety, and eventually the planet Earth.
The goals that satisfy developments in green technology field include :
(1) Sustainability: meeting the needs of society in ways that can continue indefinitely
into the future without damaging or depleting natural resources.
(2) “Cradle to cradle” design: ending the “cradle to grave” cycle of manufactured
products, by creating products that can be fully reclaimed or reused.
(3) Source reduction: reducing waste and pollution by changing patterns of production
and consumption.
(4) Innovation: developing alternatives to technologies rather than those have been
demonstrated to damage health and the environment.
(5) “Safe environmental monitor”: applying digital energy-saving technologies for
disaster prevention, caused by climate change.
(6) Viability: creating a center of economic activity around technologies and products
that benefit the environment, speeding their implementation and creating new careers
that truly protect the planet.

Moving Towards Green Buildings

Green buildings
Why?
Buildings cause dozens billion tons of carbon emissions and consume roughly one-third of
the global energy and water every year.
The construction of buildings and production of materials lead to 40% of all pollution
emissions and around one-third of black carbon emissions .
Two decade ago, green buildings were a novelty. Today, they are increasingly becoming the
norm – from full green buildings to sustainable design elements.
A ‘green’ building is a building that, in its design, construction or operation, reduces or
eliminates negative impacts, and can create positive impacts, on climate and natural
environment. Green buildings preserve precious natural resources and improve quality of life.

Features of a green buildings
Efficient use of energy, water and other resources
Use of renewable energy, such as solar energy
Pollution and waste reduction measures, and the enabling of re-use and
recycling
Good indoor environmental air quality
Use of materials that are non-toxic, ethical and sustainable
Consideration of the environment in design, construction and operation
Consideration of the quality of life of occupants in design, construction and
operation
A design that enables adaptation to a changing environment
Any building can be a green building, whether it’s a home, an office, a school, a
hospital, a community center, or any other type of structure, provided it includes
features listed above.

The source and quality of the construction
material influences the indoor environment and
also the cost of a building….
Green construction material
Green construction material is a kind of building material
which needs to meet the following points:
The use of clean production technology
 No or less use of natural resources and energy
 A large amount of use of industrial, agricultural, or
municipal solid waste production with the features of
free-pollution, recyclability, environmental protection,
and human health.

Research on the Literature of Green Building

The researches related to “green construction materials can be traced back to the
19th century, as shown in below:
Source: Hao Wang , Pen-Chi Chiang, Yanpeng Cai, Hao Wang et al., Application of Wall and Insulation Materials on Green Building: A Review. Sustainability 2018, 10,
3331.
The researches increased quickly after 2000, more than 200 relevant papers were published
every year after 2000. English, Chinese, and Korean are the three main languages of the
publications.

The number of documents increased year by year from 2002 to 2018, and the trends of core database
and extended database are almost the same.
The number of documents has maintained a rapid increase before 2013, while the number of those that
published in the past five years has stabilized at more than 300.
 It can be seen that research on green building has entered a steady-growth stage, and people’s attention
to green building also remains at a relatively stable level
Two keywords, green building and sustainable building, are selected using subject search.
Sourse: Yingling Shi and Xinping Liu. Research on the Literature of Green Building Based on the Web of Science: A Scientometric Analysis in CiteSpace (2002–2018).
Sustainability 2019, 11, 3716.

Practices towards green building:
Using Environmental Friendly Materials

Natural Clay
Plastering of walls can be done using natural clay rather than other gypsum-
based plasters.
Natural clay plaster with proper workmanship gives a beautiful appearance to
the interior.
Natural Fibers
Naturally occurring materials like bamboo, wool and cotton fiber carpets, cork
etc. can be used for flooring purposes.
Stone
Stone is a naturally occurring and a long-lasting building material. Some Stone
structures built hundreds of years ago are still in existence without much
abrasion.
Stones are good against weathering hence they can be used to construct
exterior walls, steps, exterior flooring etc.
Earthen Materials
Earthen materials like adobe, cob, and rammed earth are being used for
construction purposes since yore. For good strength and durability- chopped
straw, grass and other fibrous materials etc. are added to earth. Even today,
structures built with adobe or cob can be seen in some remote areas.
I. Using natural materials

Cordwood
If wood is abundantly available and easily accessible to the site of construction, cordwood construction is
widely used for wall structures.
It requires short and round pieces of wood which are laid one above the other, width wise, and are bonded
together by special mortar mix.
They are strong, environmental friendly and also give good appearance to the structure.
Cordwood Wall

II. Replacing the cement and/or aggregate by waste
wastes include foundry sand, combustor ash, sawdust, burnt clay, red
mud, incinerator residue, waste glass, quarrying and mining wastes,
power plant wastes, grinding slag, fly ash, silica fume, and recycled
aggregates are mixed into concrete to replace part of cement and
or/aggregate, which could decrease the pollution of the environment.
III. Using plant fibers as cement reinforcement
There are lot of investigations and studies on plant fibers used as
cement reinforcement materials.
Disadvantages of using plant fibers:
Expand when wet and shrinkage when dry which will affect the
degree of bond between fiber and concrete.
Easily absorbs water in the process of concrete mixing.
However, plant fiber concrete has been applied to some projects and
achieved good results.

IV. Using Natural Insulation Materials
Recycled wood
Wood plays a very important role in the construction of urban
infrastructure, family, and enterprise, such as boards, wooden
doors and windows, building components, chair stools, floors,
shelves, and so on. Recycled wood is with great potential for
recycling.
Locally available fiber and other agricultural waste
composites
cork , paddy straw, coconut pitch, maize husk, and groundnut
shell have the lowest thermal conductivity among most
natural insulation materials and lower than foamed
polyurethane.

Straw bale can be used as framing material for building because of good insulating
properties. They can also act as soundproof materials.
Non-load bearing walls of straw bale can be used as fill material in between
columns and, in beams framework.
.
Straw Bale Wall

V. Using of nano-engineering technology (pioneering new technique)
Incorporation of nanomaterials including metalic and alloy NPs, nano
silica, nanopolymers and nanographene into traditional concrete
production.
including nanomaterials can reduce the amount of materials required
to make concrete leading to a significant reduction of the carbon
emissions and making conventional concrete production methods
more sustainable and environmentally friendly.
The new composite material not only is it stronger and more durable,
but it is also more resistant to water, making it uniquely suitable for
construction in areas which require maintenance work and are difficult
to be accessed. .

VI. Using Smart Glass
It composed of glass or other transparent materials such as substrate. Under certain
physical conditions (such as light, electric field, temperature), the device can
selectively absorb or reflect the heat radiation of the outside world and prevent the
internal heat diffusion, so as to achieve the purpose of energy saving by adjusting the
light intensity and indoor temperature.
The functional materials in the smart window are generally liquid crystals, VO2, WO3,
and TiO2. Besides, water with dye and aerogel could be applied into smart windows as
well.
Optically and electrically switchable smart window

•Smart glass that can alternate between opaque and transparent glass.
•It works by supplying a current to the glass which causes the particles to align
themselves in such a way that light can pass through. When there is no current the
particles move about randomly and block light.
Smart windows (electro chromic glass with electrically switchable polymer dispersed liquid
crystal (liquid crystal droplets dispersed in an appropriate polymer matrix).

Geopolymer recycled aggregate concrete preparation plan
Geopolymerisation is a green technology capable of turning industrial wastes into strong and chemically
durable cementitious binders.
Geopolymers are a class of inorganic polymer formed by the reaction between an alkaline solution and an
aluminosilicate source. Any Pozzolanic compound that is readily dissolved in alkaline solution will serve as a
source of geopolymer precursor species.
VII. Geopolymer Concrete as Green Construction material

Geopolymer cements do not rely on calcium carbonate and generate much less CO2
during manufacture. There is a reduction of about 60 % of the energy, and 80% of
the CO2 emission from geopolymer-cement.
The World’s first public building Queensland’s
University GCI ( Global Change Institute's )/Australia,
with 3 suspended floors made from structural
geopolymer concrete ( opened in August 2013).

Are there any downsides to green building?
Like anything, the green building comes with both pros and cons.
Possible disadvantages include:
The initial building cost, can be more expensive than conventional
buildings.
Funding for projects from banks hard to get since a lot of the
technology and methods are still relatively new.
Green construction materials are not always as readily available as
traditional materials.
Finding artisans and service providers specializing in green design can
be more challenging than procuring traditional suppliers.
Green building can be more complex, and time-consuming to build.
However, the Advantages of Green Buildings Outweigh the Disadvantages

Conclusions
 Green building is a financially, health, and most importantly
environmentally responsible idea that more people need to adopt.
 Using environmental friendly materials in building construction
is one of the potential practices in green civil engineering.
 Building owners, designers, architects and facility managers
should work together to create buildings with the minimal impact
on the environment possible.
 It is possible to encourage more people to adopt green building
and all of the benefits that come along with it throughout making
the environmentally products more readily accessible and reliable,
using green building materials and renewable energy sources and
by providing government incentives.

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