The article presents an overview of the environmental actions of the Danish cement and concrete industry over the last ten years. The areas include reduced Portland clinker content which means improved CO 2 footprint of the concrete. It is described how carbonation of concrete after demolition and crushing may improve the CO 2 footprint even further by taking into account the absorption of CO 2 from the atmosphere. Recently there has been a 3-year project initiated by the Danish cement and concrete industry. This project has succeeded in promoting the image of concrete as a sustainable building material in the Danish public. It is the result of several scientific investigations for instance determining the effect of concrete emissions on the indoor air quality and the solution to hydrocarbon pollution in concrete slurry at the concrete plant. Finally the article contains examples of how to improve the sustainability of concrete production and how to produce green concrete. Green concrete is the term used in Denmark for environmentally friendly concrete production and structures.
Cement and concrete may have an important role to play in enabling Denmark to fulfil its obligation, agreed at the Kyoto conference, to reduce the total CO 2 emission by 21% compared to the 1990 level before 2012. This is because approximately 2% of Denmarks total CO 2 emission stems from cement and concrete production. There is considerable knowledge about how to produce concrete with a reduced environmental impact. However, it is not known to a sufficient degree neither in Denmark nor internationally on what scale, and with what technology, this green concrete can be applied in practice in buildings and structures. For instance, there is not enough information about how the properties of green concrete, such as compressive strength, durability, fire performance, casting and execution, hardening and curing, are affected by the measures to reduce the environmental impact of concrete. This paper gives an overview of the present state of affairs in Denmark of concrete types that have reduced environmental impact. There is a description of among other things the possibilities of using green concrete within the existing standards and specifications. A special focus will be on a large Danish centre running from 1998 to 2002, involving leading universities, institutes, building owners, contractors, consultancies, and cement and concrete manufacturers. The potential environmental benefit to society of being able to build with green concrete is huge. It is realistic to assume that technology, which can halve the CO 2 emission related to concrete production, can be developed. This will potentially reduce Denmarks total CO 2 emissions by 0.5% and will contribute significantly to achieving the targets set up at the Kyoto Conference. Furthermore, green concrete might solve some of the societies problems with the use of inorganic, residual products which should otherwise be deposited.
There are numerous ways of improving concrete structure's environmental performance. An overview of these are presented and exemplified in the present article. They include choice of raw materials, mix design of the concrete, production processes, construction processes, design and use during service life and the end‐of‐life demolition‐crushingreuse. Thus the whole life cycle is considered. This will be the key content of the future fib 3.8 guidelines on green concrete structures which will also include some background information and specific benchmark data.
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