Life cycle assessment of a new industrial process for sustainable construction materials

One of the key sectors for the green transition of European countries is construction, that is more and more asked to evolve towards innovative ecological binders and green cost-effective processes. The construction sector is highly energy intensive, and the cement production is one of the main sources of environmental pollution in the world. In this regard, GeoPolymers (GP) seem to be promising for a sustainable replacement of cementitious materials. Therefore, the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the industrial production of different formulations of Geopolymer Concrete (GC) was performed in this study after scaling up the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) from a laboratory scale to an industrial one. Based on LCA results, the Global Warming Potential (GWP) indicator demonstrated a lower greenhouse gas emission of the proposed GC production in respect to the CC manufacturing process, while no significant difference was observed in the GWP scores of the considered GC formulations when referring to the functional unit. Nevertheless, the usage of the innovative GC formulations, on an industrial scale, would avoid a significant reduction of sand and kaolin extracted, with a consequent decrease on the environmental impact. Finally, the economic assessment showed that the combined production of thermal and electrical energy by a cogeneration system could provide a significant cost reduction when the percentage of electricity fed into the public network is higher than 39%.

Automated summary

One of the key sectors for the green transition of European countries is the construction industry, which is being asked to evolve towards innovative ecological binders and green cost-effective processes. GeoPolymers (GP) are promising for replacing cementitious materials sustainably. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of different formulations of Geopolymer Concrete (GC) on an industrial scale showed lower greenhouse gas emissions compared to the traditional cement production process. The usage of innovative GC formulations could also reduce environmental impact by avoiding excessive extraction of sand and kaolin.