HIGH-PERFORMANCE CONCRETE FOR GREEN CONSTRUCTION

Herbert W. ZHENG1, Fiona W. Y. CHAN2 and Albert K. H. KWAN2

1 Gammon Construction Ltd, Hong Kong Herbert.Zheng@gammonconstruction.com

The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong fionabobo2004@yahoo.com.hk, khkwan@hkucc.hku.hk

Concrete is a widely used construction material. However, the production of concrete for new buildings and the eventual demolition of old buildings generate a large carbon footprint that causes global warming and a large volume of solid waste that uses up valuable landfill space. In order to mitigate these problems, there is a pressing need to reduce the consumption of concrete and extend the service life of concrete buildings. For such purposes, the authors have been advocating the usage of more high-performance concrete (HPC), which has higher strength, durability and workability than normal concrete. The higher strength could reduce the volume of concrete needed whereas the higher durability could extend the service life of concrete buildings. In this regard, there is often the misunderstanding that HPC, which usually contains more cementitious materials, would generate a larger carbon footprint. Herein, life-cycle analysis of the carbon footprint of concrete construction is conducted to demonstrate that although HPC tends to have a higher cementitious material content per unit volume, due to the reduced volume of concrete needed and the extended service life of buildings, its carbon footprint is actually much lower. Keywords: carbon footprint, green construction, sustainable development.

1. Introduction Concrete is the most widely used construction material in the world, and its annual consumption worldwide is approximately 5 billion m3 per year (Glavind & MunchPetersen, 2002). Hence, its usage has great impact on the sustainable development of our society. By nature, concrete is an artificial rock composed of cement, aggregate, water and other chemicals. With steel reinforcement provided, it becomes reinforced concrete, which is a uniquely strong and durable material suitable for virtually all kinds of construction. However, the production of cement, a key ingredient of concrete, involves the heating of limestone. The production of one ton of cement emits almost one ton of carbon dioxide. Indeed, it is estimated that 78% of global greenhouse gas emission comes from cement production and the situation is going to become worse because the demand for concrete is predicted to double over the next decade (Mehta, 2001). On the other hand, since all buildings have limited life, what comes up has to be pulled down after expiry of its service life. As time goes by, the number of old buildings reaching the end of their design service life keeps on increasing. For example, in Hong Kong, the number of old buildings reaching the end of their design service life (usually 50 years) will increase to 7,400 (about 16% of the building stock) in just 10 years of time (HAD, 2009). Most of these old buildings will need to be demolished. As a result, the

7th International Conference on Tall Buildings. Editor: Francis TK AU Copyright c 2009 by Research Publishing Services :: www.rpsonline.com.sg 978-962-8014-19-4

7th International Conference on Tall Buildings

volume of construction and demolition waste produced every year is ever increasing, thus putting an enormous strain on the landfill space needed for solid waste disposal. In Hong Kong, of the approximately 5 million tons of solid waste to be disposed every year, construction and demolition waste accounts for about 21%. With the current trend, the landfills in Hong Kong are expected to be full in early to mid-2010s (EPD, 2009). In view of the afore-mentioned acute problems of green house gas emission due to production of cement and solid waste disposal due to reconstruction of old concrete buildings, there is a pressing need to explore possible ways of reducing the consumption of cement and extending the design service life of concrete buildings. For reducing the consumption of cement, most engineers focus only on the reduction of the cement content by replacing part of the cement in the concrete with supplementary cementitious materials such as pulverized fuel ash (PFA) and ground granulated blast-furnace slag (GGBS). However, there are upper limits of the proportion of cement that may be replaced by PFA or GGBS because excessive replacement of cement by PFA or GGBS could substantially lower the strength, especially early strength, of the concrete and extend the curing time required. Herein, it is advocated that for reducing the consumption of cement, we should consider not just the reduction of the cement content but also the reduction of the volume of concrete needed. The latter can be achieved by using a high-performance concrete (HPC), which has a higher strength than normal concrete. It will be shown in this paper that with a higher strength, the volume of concrete needed for the same loading can be substantially reduced. Furthermore, since the use of HPC can also enhance the durability of the concrete buildings constructed, the design service life of the buildings could be significantly extended, thus reducing the long-term consumption of both cement and concrete. All in all, the authors would like to profess that a HPC having both higher strength and durability than normal concrete is a better concrete for green construction and sustainable development. 2. Production of HPC HPC is a concrete having higher performance than normal concrete in certain aspects such as strength, workability, dimensional stability and durability. It is generally produced by replacing some of the cement with supplementary cementitious materials, such as PFA, GGBS and condensed silica fume (CSF) etc. These supplementary cementitious materials possess the pozzolanic property of converting the soluble lime (calcium hydroxide) produced as a byproduct of cement hydration into further gel products with bonding strength. These gel products would increase the strength to compensate for the reduction in strength due to reduction in cement content and more importantly would fill up the voids in the cement matrix to reduce the permeability of the concrete. Furthermore, depending on the specified concrete grade, HPC is usually produced with a lower water/cementitious materials (W/CM) ratio to increase the strength to beyond that of normal concrete. This is made possible by adding a superplasticizer (SP) to the concrete to compensate for the reduction in workability due to reduction in W/CM ratio. With a relatively low W/CM ratio adopted, the permeability of

154

7th International Conference on Tall Buildings

the concrete is further reduced and as a result the use of HPC would substantially improve the durability of the concrete buildings constructed. Because of the necessity to set a low W/CM ratio for achieving high strength, the cementitious materials content of a HPC tends to be relatively high. As this would lead to a relatively large carbon footprint, some engineers have been criticizing that the use of HPC is not environmentally friendly. However, with the addition of modern SP, especially the polycarboxylate-based SP, which can dramatically increase the workability of concrete while keeping the water content low, the W/CM ratio may be lowered without having to increase the cementitious materials content by too much. Moreover, since a large proportion of the cementitious materials comprises of PFA, GGBS and/or CSF, the actual cement content of a HPC is not necessarily higher than that of a normal concrete, as will be shown in the case study presented in a later section. 3. Contribution of HPC to green construction 3.1 Pros of the higher strength of HPC By adding CSF and/or lowering the W/CM ratio to below 0.3, it is now possible to produce a HPC with a characteristic cube strength up to 100 MPa or even higher. CSF, which consists of ultrafine particles of mean size 0.1 to 0.2 microns, can fill up the voids between the cement grains and significantly increase the packing density of the cementitious materials, thus allowing the W/CM ratio to be lowered to as low as 0.2 to increase the strength (Wong & Kwan, 2005). Although the addition of CSF and lowering of W/CM ratio would reduce the workability of the concrete, this can be compensated or even more than compensated by adding a good SP. HPC of grade up to 100 is already being produced for the construction of bridges and buildings. For example, in Hong Kong, Grade 60 concrete and Grade 80 concrete have been used for the construction of Kwun Tong Bypass and Tsing Ma Bridge, respectively, and Grade 100 concrete has been used recently for the construction of One Island East, a 70-storey building. The higher strength of HPC offers substantial technical benefits compared to the conventional concrete design, including greater span/depth ratio, greater height, smaller member size, lighter dead weight and larger usable floor area. Particularly, the smaller member size would lead to a smaller volume of concrete needed for the construction. In the case of bridges, Malier et al. (1992) have evaluated the materials consumption using different grades of concrete during the preliminary design of Joigny Bridge and found that the volume of concrete needed could be reduced by about 30% when a higher strength Grade 60 concrete is used. In the case of buildings, the authors have found based on their own experience in Hong Kong that the use of Grade 60 to 80 HPC instead of the conventional Grade 45 concrete could reduce the volume of concrete needed by more than 20%; a case study is presented in a later section to illustrate such possible saving in the volume of concrete needed for construction. Moreover, if the rental value of the building is high, the increase in usable floor area due to the reduction in member size could generate a large commercial benefit.

155

7th International Conference on Tall Buildings

3.2 Pros of the higher durability of HPC Both the addition of supplementary cementitious materials, such as PFA, GGBS and CSF, and the adoption of a relatively low W/CM ratio in the production of HPC would substantially improve the durability of the concrete buildings constructed. In fact, Khayat & Atcin (1991) have estimated that the addition of 5% CSF could reduce the coefficient of permeability of the concrete by three orders of magnitude. Added with the other benefits of increasing the resistance of the concrete to weathering, mechanical damage and chemical attack, concrete buildings constructed of HPC should be able to last much longer time than those constructed of normal concrete. As in most other places in the world, the design service life of buildings in Hong Kong has been set at 50 years. This is clearly stipulated in the new Code of Practice for Structural Use of Concrete published in 2004. Judging on the basis of the authors own experience in condition surveys of old buildings in Hong Kong (the third author has assessed the conditions of more than 160 old buildings in Hong Kong), concrete buildings designed and constructed in accordance with the earlier codes have been performing satisfactorily and are generally capable of lasting up to 50 years. With the technology advancement over the decades and the availability of HPC, which can substantially improve the durability of the buildings constructed, the authors are of the view that it is about time to consider increasing the design service life of concrete buildings to 75 years or even 100 years. A life-cycle analysis is carried out in the following to demonstrate that this could significantly reduce the carbon footprint of building construction. 4. Life-cycle analysis of carbon footprint of concrete construction The carbon footprint of a specific human activity is the total carbon dioxide (CO2) emission caused directly and indirectly by the various events of the activity. For the delivery of a product, the carbon footprint is the total amount of CO2 emitted during the production and transportation processes including that emitted to generate the energy needed for heating, chemical reactions and mechanical treatment. In the particular case of concrete construction, the carbon footprint is resulted mainly from the CO2 generated during the production of cement. As explained in the Introduction, the production of every ton of cement generates nearly one ton of CO2. The incorporation of supplementary cementitious materials also contributes to the carbon footprint, but since they are generally byproducts or waste of other manufacturing processes, their carbon footprint may be regarded as minimal.

156

7th International Conference on Tall Buildings

Since all concrete buildings have limited service life and will have to be reconstructed after expiry of their service life, it is essential to consider all the life-cycle phases when evaluating the carbon footprint of concrete construction. This means that we have to consider not just the carbon footprint of the new construction, but also the carbon footprint of the future reconstruction. Furthermore, as regular maintenance and repair have to be provided during the service life and construction and demolition waste will be produced during the future reconstruction, the environmental impacts associated with the use, maintenance/repair and demolition/disposal all have to be considered (Damtoft et al., 2001). In other words, the total environmental performance of the concrete construction from cradle to grave has to be taken into account. More specifically, the various phases to be considered are: initial construction (production of materials plus actual construction), maintenance and repair (inclusive of the replacement of any defective elements), and demolition and removal (Edvardsen & Tllse, 2001). For a typical concrete column of conventional design, the carbon footprints generated at the various phases during the entire service life, each expressed as a percentage of the total carbon footprint, are shown in Figure 1 (Glavind & Jepsen, 2002). It is seen that the initial construction phase generates 72% of the total carbon footprint, whereas the maintenance and repair phase generates 22% of the total carbon footprint. Hence, the maintenance and repair phase could generate a carbon footprint up to about 30% of that of the initial construction phase. At the end of the service life, the demolition and removal phase generates 6% of the total carbon footprint; this amounts to about 8% of that of the initial construction phase.
Removal Demolition 3% 3% Repair 19% Concrete production 65% Operation & maintenance 3% Construction 7%

Figure 1. Carbon footprint at various life-cycle phases of a typical concrete column

Lastly, to take into account the difference in service life of concrete buildings constructed of different materials and provided with different maintenance/repair, the service life should also be considered. Herein, it is suggested to evaluate the total environmental performance of a concrete building in terms of the carbon footprint per year of service, which may be calculated as the total carbon footprint generated during the whole lifecycle divided by the length of service life.

157

7th International Conference on Tall Buildings

5. Case study For a case study, the total environmental performance of One Island East, a 70-storey building with a gross floor area of 141,000 m2, is evaluated. One Island East is a commercial building in Quarry Bay, Hong Kong. It was completed in 2008 and is the first building ever constructed in Hong Kong using a vast quantity of Grade 100 HPC. The first author was the concrete designer of this building. At the structural design stage, both Grade 45 normal concrete and Grade 100 HPC had been considered for the building construction. Their mix compositions are presented in Table 1, where the carbon footprints of the ingredient are also listed. From this table, it may be noted that although the Grade 100 HPC had a higher cementitious materials content, its cement content was actually the same as that of the Grade 45 normal concrete. The higher strength of the Grade 100 HPC was achieved by increasing the PFA content, adding some CSF and lowering the W/CM ratio without increasing the cement content. As a result, the carbon footprint per unit volume of the Grade 100 HPC was very much the same as that of the Grade 45 normal concrete.
Table 1. Comparison of carbon footprint per unit volume Weight of each ingredient per unit volume of concrete (kg/m3) Grade 45 normal concrete Cement PFA CSF Aggregate Water Carbon footprint of concrete per unit volume (kgCO2/m3) 380 125 0 1,610 200 325 Grade 100 HPC 380 145 58 1,640 150 326

Carbon footprint of each ingredient (kgCO2/kg) 0.83 0.01 0.01 0.005 0 -

Note: The carbon footprint of each ingredient is based on Inventory of Carbon & Energy (ICE).

It had been calculated that with Grade 45 normal concrete used, the volume of concrete needed would be 45,440 m3, while with Grade 100 HPC used, because of its higher strength which allowed the member sizes to be reduced, the volume of concrete needed could be reduced by about 30% to 32,000 m3, as depicted in Table 2. Such reduction in the volume of concrete needed had significantly reduced the total cement consumption and thus the total carbon footprint of the concrete production. Dividing the total carbon footprint by the gross floor area, the carbon footprint per unit floor area of the Grade 45 normal concrete was 105 kgCO2/m2 while that of the Grade 100 HPC was 74 kgCO2/m2. Comparing these two values, it is evident that the use of Grade 100 HPC instead of Grade 45 normal concrete had reduced the total carbon footprint by about 30%. The reduction in member sizes had also increased the net floor area for a higher rental value, but this benefit is not counted towards the environmental performance of the building.

158

7th International Conference on Tall Buildings

Table 2. Comparison of carbon footprint per unit floor area Grade 45 normal concrete Carbon footprint per unit volume (kgCO2/m3) Volume of concrete needed (m3) Total carbon footprint (kgCO2) Gross floor area (m2) Carbon footprint per unit floor area (kgCO2/m2) 105 325 45,440 14,768,000 141,000 74 Grade 100 HPC 326 32,000 10,432,000

In terms of durability, the Grade 100 HPC was definitely better than the Grade 45 normal concrete. With Grade 45 normal concrete used, the design service life of the building was assumed to be 50 years, as stipulated in the current code of practice. With the denser and more impermeable Grade 100 HPC used, the design service life could have been set longer. There is up to now no code of practice stipulating the requirements for a longer design service life than 50 years. Nevertheless, the authors recommend herein that with Grade 100 HPC used, the design service life should be taken as 75 years. Assuming that with Grade 100 HPC used, the design service life could be extended from 50 to 75 years, the life-cycle analysis of the total environmental performance of the building is carried out as depicted in Table 3. From the analysis, it is evident that with the design service life extended by using HPC, the carbon footprint per unit floor area per year of service could be substantially reduced. For the particular case studied, the reduction in carbon footprint per unit floor area per year of service due to the use of HPC is almost 50%.

Table 3. Comparison of carbon footprint per unit floor area per year of service Carbon footprint per unit floor area (kgCO2/m2) Grade 45 normal concrete (design service life = 50 years) Concrete production Initial construction Regular maintenance and repair Demolition and removal Whole life cycle 105 115.5 35.0 11.6 162.1 Grade 100 HPC (design service life = 75 years) 74 81.4 36.6 8.1 126.1

Carbon footprint per unit floor area 1.68 (kgCO2/m2/year) 3.24 (kgCO2/m2/year) per year of service Notes: 1. To allow for the carbon footprint of the actual construction, the carbon footprint of the initial construction is assumed to be 10% higher than that of the concrete production. 2. It is assumed that every 20 years during the service life, regular maintenance and repair are required and each round of maintenance and repair would contribute to a carbon footprint equal to 15% of that of the initial construction. 3. It is assumed that the demolition and removal at the end of the service life would contribute to a carbon footprint equal to 10% of that of the initial construction.

6. Conclusions To compare the environmental performance of HPC with normal concrete, a case study of a recently completed 70-storey building constructed largely of Grade 100 HPC has been carried out. It was found that although HPC tends to have a higher cementitious

159

7th International Conference on Tall Buildings

materials content, its cement content is not necessarily higher and as a result the carbon footprint per unit volume of HPC is very much the same as that of normal concrete. However, the higher strength of HPC could reduce the volume of concrete needed and thus reduce the consumption of cement. This would substantially reduce the total carbon footprint of the concrete construction and in the case of a building the carbon footprint per unit floor area of the building constructed. Moreover, the higher durability of HPC could extend the design service life of the building. A life-cycle analysis of the carbon footprints generated at the various phases of the entire life cycle has been conducted and the results revealed that if the design service life could be extended from 50 to 75 years due to the higher durability of HPC, the carbon footprint per unit floor area per year of service could be further reduced. For the particular case studied, the reduction in carbon footprint per unit floor area per year of service due to the higher strength and durability of the HPC used is about 50%. This is a great contribution to the environment. Finally, the authors would like to conclude that HPC is a better concrete for green construction. References
C. Edvardsen and K. Tllse, Environmentally green concrete structures, in Proc. FIBsymposium on Concrete and Environment (Berlin, Germany, 2001). Environmental Protection Department (EPD). Data and Statistics of Waste in Hong Kong [Online] Available at: http://www.epd.gov.hk/epd/english/environmentinhk/waste/data/stat_treat.html Home Affairs Department (HAD). Database of Private Buildings in Hong Kong [Online] Available at: https://bmis.buildingmgt.gov.hk/eng/buildingsearch.php (2009). H.H.C. Wong and A.K.H. Kwan, Packing density: A key concept for mix design of high performance concrete, in Proc. of Materials Science and Technology in Engineering Conference (MaSTEC), ed. Hong Kong Institution of Engineers (Hong Kong, 2005), p. 1-15. J.S. Damtoft, M. Glavind, and C. Munch-Petersen, Danish centre for green concrete, in Proc. CANMET/ACI International Conference (San Francisco, USA, 2001). K.H. Khayat, and P.C. Atcin, Silica fume in concrete An overview, in Proc. CANMET/ACI International Workshop on the Use of Silica Fume in Concrete, ed. Canada Centre for Mineral and Energy Technology (Ottawa, Canada, 1991). M. Glavind and C. Munch-Petersen, Green concrete A life cycle approach, in Proc. Challenges of Concrete Construction (Dundee, Scotland, 2002). M. Glavind and M.T. Jepsen, Evaluation of green concrete types, in Proc. XVIII Symposium on Nordic Concrete Research (Helsingr, Denmark, 2002). P.K. Mehta, Concrete International, ACI, 61-66 (2001). Y. Malier, D. Brazillier, and S. Roi, The Joigny Bridge: An experimental high performance concrete bridge, in High performance Concrete: From Material to Structure, ed. Y. Malier (E & FN Spon, London, 1992), p. 424.

160