Environmental evaluation of reinforcing bars sold on the French Market

Author(s): F. Gomes, R. Brière, G. Habert, A. Feraille, S. Lasvaux and C. Tessier
Paper category: symposium
Book title: International Symposium on Life Cycle Assessment and Construction – Civil engineering and buildings
Editor(s): A. Ventura and C. de la Roche
Print ISBN: 978-2-35158-127-8
e-ISBN: 978-2-35158-128-5
Publisher: RILEM Publications SARL
Pages: 256 – 264
Total Pages: 9
Language: English

Abstract: In civil engineering, the production of materials is responsible for significant environmental burdens on air and water emissions and resources consumption. However, these materials are produced with very specific process and the commonly used databases do not provide data to accurately evaluate all the diversity of civil engineering’s materials. Therefore the development of a sector-oriented environmental database for civil engineering products is needed. The present paper is a contribution to the development of data for reinforcing bars, representative of the French market. The paper focuses on the methodology followed to build the environmental data (cradle to construction field gate) from Ecoinvent database and specific data collected from material producers and production plants. The values obtained from the modelling are compared to the original environmental data of Ecoinvent and to the WorldSteel Association data for reinforcing steel, available in the ELCD database (European Life Cycle Data). The results highlight the fact that the environmental impacts of reinforcing steel used in France are lower than those published in global European database for all impacts except terrestrial ecotoxicity. Furthermore, variations on transport distances between the steel production plant and the construction site do not significantly change the results.

Keywords: Steel, cradle-to-gate Life Cycle Inventory (LCI), blast furnace route, electric route, electricity mix, transport

Online publication: 2012
Publication Type: full_text
Public price (Euros): 0.00