The purpose of this article is to estimate the economic and environmental impacts of energy consumption derived from healthcare buildings and proposes several energy-saving options in the sector. An experimental energy consumption study was development between 2005 and 2013 in 12 hospitals and 70 healthcare centres in Spain, built between 1980 and 2005 through audits carried out between 2005 and 2012, performed by the Extremadura Energy Agency. The study focused on electric energy, HVAC, DWH, lighting systems, renewable energies, maintenance strategy, thermal insulation, and optimal building size. Specifically, the following parameters were evaluated: energy savings, investment emission of CO 2 , NO 2 , and SO 2 gases, and payback. The results revealed that through an appropriate energy management of healthcare buildings it is possible to save up to 8.60 kWh/m 2 per year, for buildings of less than 5000 m 2 (with no beds), which represents an expense of 1.55 €/m 2. In healthcare buildings larger than 5000 m 2 (with beds), it was possible to save up to 6.88 kWh/m 2 per year, which represents an expense of 1.25 €/m 2 .
A series of activated carbons were prepared by physical steam gasification under identical experimental conditions to compare the pore development from almond tree pruning chars and walnut shell activated carbons. The results obtained showed that steam gasification yields microporous carbons in both cases, and the rise in temperature causes an increase of the pore volumes of the activated carbons, up to a certain degree of burn-off. This effect was more marked for walnut shell, which gave rise to activated carbons with apparent surface values of up to 1434 m 2 ·g −1 . Also, a slight widening of porosity was found at low burn-off degrees. This pore widening was more marked in the case of activated carbons from almond tree pruning, which also have a high macropore volume. It was found that the lignocellulosic and porosity properties of the raw materials can cause this different behavior towards activation processes.
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