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The energy demand of private households contributes globally to 36.5% of the total CO2 emissions. To analyze the emissions reduction potential, we conducted a comparative life cycle assessment of a proton exchange membrane fuel cell in a residential application and a conventional system with a stand-alone gas condensing boiler and electricity from a grid mix. The period under review was referred to as the service life of the PEMFC and is assumed to be 10 years (83,038 h of PEMFC). The applicability of this in a single-family house built between 1991 and 2000 under German climatic conditions was investigated. The functional unit is set to the thermal energy demand of 16,244 kWh/a and electricity demand of 4919 kWh/a of a single-family house. The impact assessment method “CML 2001–August 2016” was used in this investigation. The manufacturing phase of the proton exchange membrane fuel cell showed disadvantages, whereby the use phase had significant advantages in most of the environmental impact categories as compared to the conventional energy supply system. Considering the whole life cycle, the advantages from the use phase could outperform the disadvantages from the manufacturing phase in most of the impact categories, except for ADP elements and TETP.
Mechanochemistry offers an environmentally benign and facile synthesis method for a variety of cement paste constituents. In addition, these methods can be used to selectively tune the properties of cement components. The mineral ettringite is an important component of cementitious materials and has additional technological potential due to its ion exchange properties.
Synthesis of ettringite via mechanochemistry is an environmentally friendly alternative to conventional wet-chemical synthesis established in industry. This contribution explores the mechanism of a two-step mechanochemical synthesis of ettringite, which was previously found to greatly improve the reaction conversion as compared with one-pot synthesis. The crystallinity of Al(OH)3 was found to decrease during the first stage of this mechanochemical synthesis. This was correlated to a significant decrease in the particle size of Al(OH)3 in this stage. No other significant changes were found for the other components, suggesting that mechanochemical activation of Al(OH)3 is responsible for the enhanced formation of ettringite by the two-step approach. The environmentally friendly approach developed for ettringite synthesis offers a versatile synthetic strategy, which can be applied to synthesise further cementitious materials.
In the 21st century, adequate habitat and functioning infrastructure are critical for global societal and economic stability. In addition, growing urbanisation and environmental pollution cause challenges to societies.
With increasing velocity, humanity faces that the current way of living is not sustainable. Thus, habitat,infrastructure, urbanisation, environment and sustainability are definitively among the most striking challenges of the 21st century.
By consulting, planning, building, maintaining, exploiting and processing of global resources, civil engineers contribute significantly to the existence of these challenges. This is a high responsibility, but due to the heavy involvement, together with adjacent disciplines such as architecture, geosciences, chemistry,
physics, environmental sciences and economics, civil engineers also hold the key to mitigate these challenges and provide a brighter global future.
Solutions towards greener, more sustainable and economically viable materials do exist, and there is ongoing research on how greener technologies can contribute to better livelihood and economic growth, but their level of implementation is limited, a major reason for which is that these approaches require more fundamental understanding rather than standard application.
In many regions of the world the urbanisation process is accelerating dramatically. This puts pressure on urban planners but also politics to develop strategies for sustainable city growth. With the rapidly increasing demand for living space in urban areas, cities typically grow vertically. This is largely driven by real estate markets and sometimes also by the desire for status symbols.
Certainly, vertical urban growth makes sense, when horizontal growth destroys important flora and Fauna (e.g. in rain forest regions), but in many cases vertical growth is result of real-estate business and Expansion limitation due to state or country borders. However, economics and borders are made by humans. They follow human-made rules. Gravity does not. Therefore, from a point of view of sustainable materials and resourceuse, the trending vertical growth of cities may come under scrutiny.
The following aspects should be considered, when a decision is taken between a new quarter with limited number of storeys or a new skyscraper.
Sustainability means meeting the needs of today without compromising the needs of the next generations. How can we meet the needs of the next generations, if we do not even know what these needs are? If we do not listen to the next generation and learn from them? Do we even meet the needs of today for everyone on earth?