Life Cycle Analysis of Plain Cement Concrete and Green Concrete of Different Waste Pozzolanic Materials

Abstract

With the expeditious growth in construction industry, the concerns on the environmental emissions from the concrete productions are increasing. So it the need of hour to choose an alternative and innovate approach to meet the necessity of sustainable constructions. This research explores the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of green concrete of M15 grade using fly ash (FA), sugarcane bagasse ash (SCBA), rice husk ash (RHA) and powdered glass waste (GW) separately at different binder replacement levels of 5%, 10%, 15% and 20%. LCA was carried out on OpenLCA software using Ecoinvent and Agribalyse databases on “cradle to gate” approach. Environmental impacts of each green concrete on different replacement settings were assessed using ReCipe Midpoint (H), which in result shows that environmental impacts were least on 20% replacement. After that a comparative analysis was carried out between traditional concrete and green concrete with 20 % binder replacements. Remarkably, up to 20% replacement of supplementary materials resulted in increased compressive strength on 28 days. Comparative LCA on CML-IA baseline and GWP100a showed that SCBA concrete on 20% replacement had least environmental impacts. RHA concrete identified as major contributor for ozone layer depletions. Human and marine toxicity were more notable in FA concrete.