engleski

Sustainable Concrete Technology throught Entire Life Cycle

Sustainable development is one of the major issues of modern society, highly endangered by industrialization and technological development. Use of large amounts of non-renewable resources (sand, gravel, water), as well as significant air emissions (during production of cement) place concrete industry very high on scale of world’s pollutants. In order to contribute to environmental protection goals, research in the field of concrete technology is nowadays focused on decreasing carbon footprint and deploying less non-renewable resources throughout entire life cycle of concrete. In this paper an overview is given of possible actions that can be employed in concrete technology in order to upgrade concrete industry and create one that is environmentally more friendly and sustainable. Some of the actions include: reduction of CO2 emission by using blended cements and new types of binders ; conservation of natural resources by using aggregate recycled from construction and demolition waste, industrial waste or from end-of-life tyres ; prolongation of service life by prescribing, controlling and assuring durability in design, construction and exploitation phase of concrete structure. The benefits of given actions are highlighted through presentation of experimental results obtained on the existing scientific projects in the area of sustainable development which are being performed at Department of Materials on Faculty of Civil Engineering in Zagreb.

sustainability; concrete technology; CO2 emission; natural resources preservation; waste recycling

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