Importance of Sustainability in Construction - Essay Example

Importance of Sustainability in Construction IMPORTANCE OF SUSTAINABILITY IN CONSTRUCTION Introduction In Life cycle CO2 assessment of concrete by compressive strength on construction site in Korea, Junghoon Park, Sungho Tae, and Taehyung Kim build on the reduction of life cycle carbon dioxide building emissions and its increasing importance. This article will provide a good basis for research into the construction of a sustainable building. Various aspects that support the article’s academic reliability include its appearance in a relevant academic journal, the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews.

In addition, the authors are academics at the School of architecture and architectural engineering. Finally, various articles according to result on Google Scholar have cited this article in question. This report seeks to examine the aspects required to construct a sustainable building for Apple Corporation. It discusses some of the aspects that are required in making sustainable concrete by lowering CO2 emissions. These include assessing CO2 emissions in concrete lifecycle, development of a system that accurately assesses these emissions, and, finally, the analysis of CO2 emissions lifecycle.

The report will focus on using these methods to reduce emission of CO2 during construction of the Apple building as concrete’s compressive strength is increased. By this, the building will fit into the Sydney walking tour alongside the other buildings on the tour by being sustainable. Text Summary The authors first classified the concrete production processes into various stages, including production of the raw material, transportation of the material, and production of the cement (Park et al, 2012: p2942).

Following science-based quantification of carbon dioxide and energy consumed and emitted at all stages, a review on their environmental impacts was done. Using the results, the authors sought to determine measures for improvement of environmental conditions. For the raw material stage of production, they computed the consumed energy and emitted carbon dioxide associated with admixture, cement, and aggregate. The total emitted carbon dioxide was then computed using science based emissions per unit concrete volume.

For the transportation phase, they computed the total consumed fuel by the transporting vehicle, examining the freight vehicle load, its fuel efficiency, and distance travelled. Finally, the assessment of emission during concrete production was computed using daily consumption of energy at the batcher plants. The production process was split into storage, transportation, measurement, and mixing stages with emission for each stage analyzed (Park et al, 2012: p2943), which when used for the Apple building will ensure it fits into the walking tour’s sustainability project.

The article then moves to science based assessment of carbon dioxide emissions in the concrete lifecycle. They analyzed common Portland cement, coarse aggregate, fly ash, blast furnace slag ground, water, fine aggregate, and water reducing admixture in various proportions (Park et al, 2012: p2944). These components are highly used by constructors all over the world. They then classified data for around five hundred and sixty different proportions of mix, which they classified by the season, admixture type, and strength again important for the Apple building to fit within the Sydney walking tour’s insistence on low carbon emissions.

The authors finally drew several science-based conclusions from the research. First, carbon dioxide emission lifecycle from concrete saw a linear increase as the concrete’s compressive strength is increased (Park et al, 2012: p2946). Concrete produced during the winter at the same strengths of compression gave an increase of 5% in emissions compared to concrete made in standard season. They also found that concrete with admixture emitted approximately 47% less carbon dioxide. In addition, emission was reduced by mixing concrete with over 10% blast furnace slag and fly ash (Park et al, 2012: p2946), which when incorporated into the Apple building will enable it to fit in the walking tour.

Conclusion The building will also have to fit in with the Sydney walking tour, which will allow for a street level and self-guided exploration of the sustainable building. The buildings on the tour cleverly combine design and technology for the minimization of water consumption and carbon emissions. The Apple building seeks to stand alongside 30 the Bond building that is socially and environmentally sustainable by ensuring that the concrete used to make it emits lower CO2 during construction.

30 the Bond has managed to achieve a 5 star energy rating that has lowered emissions of CO2 by using chilled beam cooling walls made of sandstone, which reduces CO2 emission, which the Apple building seeks to do by reducing emission by concrete. Reference Park, J., Tae, S. & Kim, T., 2012. Life cycle CO2 assessment of concrete by compressive strength on construction. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews , 16 (5), 2940-2946.