Environmental Impact of Steel and Concrete as

Building Materials
Jan Bujnak
University of Zilina, Slovakia
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) technique for assessing the environmental
aspect and potential impacts associated with product (building).
Most widely used method (MWU) - predominant method for steel or
concrete material to be manufactured, shipped and erected on a typical
construction site. Each construction project is unique; no two projects
are completed or conducted in the exact same way.
The following three environmental concerns are focused:
- Energy consumption,
- Harmful air emissions & their impacts on global warming,
- Depletion of limited natural resources.

Energy consumption
Increased energy prices,
Instability in major oil producing countries,
Energy shortage in the not so distant future,
Alternative energy sources,
Improved energy efficiency in existing systems

Buildings large energy consumers

Accounting about 39% of total energy consumption,

Building consumption energy can be divided:

- embodied energy used in the construction and pre-used phase,
- operating energy required to operate and maintain the structure,
including : providing heat, light, air-conditioning, water for the
building occupants.
Operational energy far outweighs embodied energy accounting for an
estimated 80 to 90 % of total building energy.
Because average building life spans are decreasing and operational
energy efficiency is improving, the embodied energy impact on the
environment cannot be ignored.

Air Emissions
Global warming & climate changes.
Building industry is the largest contributor to the total upstream dioxide
carbon CO2 emissions accounting for 7% of the annual global greenhouse
gas emissions.

Resource Depletion
The construction industry accounts for a vast majority of raw material
consumers.
Source :M atos and Wa gner, USGS, 1 99 8

Environmental challenges because of:

- limited supply of natural resources at disposition,
- extraction and use has potential impact on environment.
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Solutions:
- new concrete with recycling admixtures
- refinement of the steel manufacturing process with to nearly 100%
recycling content.

Regional Characteristics
Obviously the MWU method can be different in other geographical areas.
The true comparison between the use of concrete and steel as building
materials should assume a location and the relevant flows for the region.

Time Frame
The construction industry is very cyclical. The predominant or most
common method today may not be the same one tomorrow. Changes in
markets have effects on the MWU method.

Backwards Modeling

composite slab

composite column

composite beam
floor = beam + slab

The four-story, 10 thousands square meters office building is used as

representative size of new construction. This ensures that standard
construction procedures are used on the construction of this functional
unit.
The process flow charts can be derived by working backwards from the
construction site. It allows important intermediate steps and flows to

identify, including intermediate transportation hubs and bulk material

storage site.

Concrete Construction Process Flow

The main product systems for a concrete building are:

- concrete production,
- formwork production,
- reinforcing bar production,
- construction.

Concrete Production
Concrete production involves the batching or mixing in standard ratio
the major inputs:
- Portland cement,
- fine aggregate,
- coarse aggregate,
- water & additional admixtures.
Generally, there are two types of batching system:
- wet-batch system or central mix system (the components are mixed
at the batch plant before loading on the mix truck),
- dry-batch system (the components are mixed in the truck en-route
to the job site).

Cement Production

Raw materials are extracted from quarries, blended and crushed

into powder. This powder is then fed through a kiln, where the materials
are chemically combined under extreme heat (pyro-processing with
temperature reaching 1800 0C) into clinker. This clinker is then cooled
and ground with a small amount of gypsum into very fine powder
Portland cement.
Clinker production is the most energy intensive process with
temperature reaching 1800 0C. Because of this, Portland cement accounts
for 94 % of the energy used to produce concrete, but only accounts for 12
% of the volume.
The pyro-processing also means a large amount of CO 2 emitted as
by-product of calcinations, which occurs in the kiln at roughly 900 0C.
Calcination is the chemical process where limestone (CaCO 3) is converted
to lime (CaO) and CO2 at very high temperature
CaCO3 = CaO + CO2
Approximately, 50 % of the CO2 are due to the calcination process
and remaining due to release of CO2 during the burning of fossil fuels.

Aggregate Production
Aggregate is divided into two categories:
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- coarse aggregates (gravel, crush rock),

- fine aggregates (sand).
The aggregate is derived by extracting rock from quarries and iteratively
crushing and sifting to the specific size.

Formwork Production
Formwork is necessary component of cast-in-place concrete. Forms are
usually constructed of different types of plywood:
HDO high density overlay,
MDO medium density overlay,
Normal.
Plywood is manufactured by layering several layers of layers of woods
veneer with resin.
Obviously, formwork is rented to the contractor on the temporary per
job basis. Regional formwork distributors stock several standard size
forms directly from manufactures.

Steel for Formwork Bracing

The requirement for steel bracing is given by formwork system. A smallsize angle sections are used.

Reinforcing Bar
Typically, re-bars are available from local warehouses and distributors
that stock obvious size and lengths. There are produced in steel bar mills.

Concrete placement
On a multi-story project, concrete is placed using a bucket or pump
truck. The energy requirements include the operation of mix trucks and
equipment during the concrete pouring (vibrators and other tools) and
form removals, once the concrete sets.

Steel Construction Process Flows

The main product systems for a steel building are:

- steel beams production,
- steel connections member production,
- steel fabrication,
- fireproofing manufacture,
- concrete production for floor slabs,
- construction.
Steel beams are produced in mini-mills using electrical arc furnance
(EAF) technology to turn a mixture of iron scrap (recycle iron and steel)
and small input of virgin iron into structural steel. These EAF facilities
are called mini-mills, because they utilize a single process to turn raw
materials into finished sections.
The basic steps in mini-mill steel-making process:
Firstly, the scrap received is weighed, checked with a radioactive sensor
and then sorted into piles. The scrap is then mixed with the virgin (pig)
iron and placed in the EAF. The EAF uses electrodes to melt the scrap
mix. The liquid iron is then ladled and de-sulfurized, the oxygen
removed, and metal alloys are added, depending on the type of steel.

The molted liquid is then casted, where it is converted from liquid to solid
by cooling.
The casted steel is thrn continues to the reheat furnace, where it is
decaled, scarfed, and hot-rolled into standard shapes.
The EAF process is very energy intensive, especially electrical.

Steel Connection Production

Steel for connections are typically angle or plate sections produced by the
EAF and hot-rolling process.

Steel Fabrication
Steel fabrication involves cutting, drilling, and fitting of raw steel
members to meet the project specifications. The primary output from the
steel fabrication shop is a combined member, ready for erection at the
construction site.
First, the beams are cut to the required length by heavy duty band saws.
The ends are then drilled to provide bolted connections. In some cases, a
punch is used. A plasma cutter is used, if irregular angles are to be cut.
Fabrication shops have multiple stations for fitting and welding
processes. If painting is required, the structural parts undergo surface
preparation (sand blasting or hand sanding).

Fireproofing production

Fireproofing production is required by building codes for steel structures.

There are two general types of fireproofing:
- intumescing paint,
- cementitious based spray.

Concrete production
Concrete production is required for the floor slab system with only
minimal reinforcement.

Steel frame- building construction

Steel erection is the actual joining of fabricated sections on construction
site and the application of fireproofing. Construction equipment includes
cranes and generators, which serve as the energy consumers during steel
erection.

LCA results
The results are:
- total raw emission of carbon dioxide in kg,
- total energy requirement in MJ,
- total amount of natural resources depleted in 100 kg.

The steel and concrete buildings have relatively similar impacts on

the environment. The exception is the resource depletion comparison,
with a difference of 70 %.

Energy Consumption
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In terms of energy consumption, steel and concrete, as primary

building materials, have equivalent energy requirements in the pre-used
phase. This total energy consumption equates to the embodied energy of
the specific building. The total embodied energy for both materials is just
over 10 Tera-Joules (TJ) per total structures with a comparable
difference of less than 1%.
The energy consumption is a combination of energy requirements
for all facilities, transportation, and construction site demands. The five
energy types are listed in the table:

Breakdown by energy source of the total energy consumption for

both steel and concrete materials is shown if the figure:

The production of electricity accounts for 43 % of the total energy

requirements for steel and 28 % for concrete as given in the figure:

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Steel Specific Results

Steel has total energy requirement for defined functional unit of 10,21 TJ.
The percent breakdown for specific product system is shown in the
figure:

The production of steel beams is the most energy intensive portion of

overall process flow. It accounts 61 % of total energy requirements when
compared against the other five product systems.
Extracting both the electricity production and transportation
requirements from the individual product system, see figures, it is evident
that the electricity production, required during beams production, is the
largest consumer of energy, due to intensive energy requirement of the
EAF process and the large quantity of beams in the building.

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Over 50% of the total energy requirement for beam production is used in
the production of electricity. A breakdown is depicted in the figure:

Concrete Specific Results

Concrete building has a total energy requirement of 10,25 TJ, only 1%
greater than the steel frame. The breakdown of total energy consumption
by the four main product system is shown in the figure:

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The concrete production accounts for half (51%) of the total energy
requirement of cast-in-place frame structure. Extracting transportation
requirements from product system, concrete production remains the
largest consumer of energy resources (40%). As is shown in the next
figure, the production of electricity has less impact on the concrete frame
building (28%), and its impact is primarily due to steel re-bar
production.

The breakdown of energy use in concrete production (batching) on the

following figure shows that the most energy intensive segment of concrete
production is the process of Portland cement production requiring 74%
of energy:

New technologies and production fuels are being used to reduce of

Portland cement energy requirements, especially:
- using recycled scrap material to heat kiln (old tires),
- replacing clinker/cement requirements with substitutes like fly ash
and blast furnace slag.

Discussion of Energy Consumption results

As it can be seen in table, steel and concrete have similar energy
requirement during the stage of construction, transport and material
production:
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While looking at the various life cycle stages, it is important to

conduct a comparison of operational energy during building
exploitation to embodied energy in construction, pre-use phase. The
operational energy can be more than 90%. Because embodied energy
is equal, the selection of material, i.e. steel or concrete is less
significant. Operational energy is evidently a more decision making
criteria in sustainable building design. However, the impact of steel or
concrete frame in term of total raw energy and material depletion in
the pre-use phase cannot be ignored by manufacturers.

Air Emissions
The raw results indicate that concrete has a 25% greater impact on
CO2 emissions than steel both are of the same order of magnitude.
Carbon dioxide is released in almost all processes from chemical
reactions or through burning of fossil fuels for kiln heating or to provide
electricity to power production facilities.

Steel frame building

The CO2 emissions breakdown for steel frame construction is depicted in
the figure:

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The primary contributors to CO2 emissions are steel beam production at

52% and concrete production for floor slabs at 32%. These two main
product systems account for nearly 85% of total dioxide carbon
emissions. This can be expected result, because the steel and concrete
represent a vast majority of the materials used in steel building
constructions.
Even after extracting the transportation requirement, the steel and
concrete production, while less, are still major contributors to CO 2
emissions. Transportation and construction stage CO 2 emissions remain
relatively constant, at 10,7% and 6,9% respectively, see the figure:

When electricity production is removed from six main product systems,

their impact on CO2 emission is minor:

The one exception is production of concrete for the floor slabs,

accounting for 27% of the total CO2 emissions.

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Concrete frame building

The breakdown of CO2 emissions by product systems are shown in the
figure:

The primary emitter of CO2 is the production of concrete at roughly

78%.
Even with transportation and electricity requirements isolated, the
concrete product system still accounts for nearly 68% of the total CO 2
emissions, see the following figures:

Analyzing the individual production processes, it can be seen that the

production of Portland cement accounts for 93% of the total CO 2
emissions in the concrete production unit process, see the figure:

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Analyzing further, actual production of Portland cement accounts for

94% of the cement production sub-unit process, with only 6% of CO 2
emissions accounted for transportation and electricity to operate the
cement production facilities, see the next figure:

For reducing CO2 emissions, decreasing the amount of Portland cement

in the mixture ration of concrete is the obvious solution. For every 10%
reduction in the amount of Portland cement in concrete by using of
admixtures like mill scale or fly ash, there is a corresponding 7,5%
decrease in CO2 emissions.

Resource Depletion
The nine of natural resources listed in the table are primary materials
used in individual unit processes for both steel and concrete frame
building constructions. The list includes renewable and non- renewable
types, while other auxiliary materials could be required for process flows.

Concrete, when used as a building material, has four times impact on

natural resources depletion compared to steel as shown in the figure:
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Steel specific results

In steel frame construction, total resources consumed is equal to 276
thousands tons. The primary natural resources are virgin iron ore
required for pig iron production, and gypsum for fireproofing
manufacture. The only resource that steel consumes more of compared to
concrete is iron ore. However, the actual EAF process uses progressively
higher recycled content in form of iron scrap.

Concrete specific results

The total quantity of resources consumed is 885 toms. In eight out of nine
resource areas, the amount of concrete exceeds steel.

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The conclusion is that a concrete construction uses four times the amount
of total raw materials than steel. Moreover, the use of scrap iron also
accounts for some difference, because recycled steel is not counted as one
of the raw resources.
The important result to note is that both materials, in the construction of
a single building require over 10 thousands tons of gross raw materials
(without water) and consume more than 100 thousands tons of water.
These impacts cannot be ignored.

Concluding remarks
While the question posed is which material is better, steel is clear
winner in CO2 emissions and resource depletion, with 25% less total
dioxide carbon emission and 68% less total natural resources used.
The energy consumption is equal and therefore does not effect the
determination.
But what if total energy requirement of steel exceeded concrete, for
instance due to requirements to receive steel from more energy
intensive foreign mills.
Where does it say that impacts of energy consumption are less
important than CO2 emissions and resource consumption?
Further, what is an acceptable threshold of CO2 emissions?
Thus, decision makers have to avoid identifying winners and take
into account that both materials have a significant impact on the
global environment.

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