Life cycle assessment of a geopolymer mixture for fireproofing applications

Development of precast geopolymer concrete via oven and microwave radiation curing with an environmental assessment

“…The overall CO 2 emitted by the production of geopolymer samples is around 57% lower by contrast with that of PC samples in Europe. A similar finding was also reported in Australia, where (McLellan et al, 2011) indicated that a 44%-64% greenhouse gas reduction could be achieved potentially in geopolymer concrete than PC concrete, which can be attributed to the large CO 2 emission of limestone decomposition in PC production (Dal Pozzo et al, 2019).…”

“…As aforementioned by other studies (Dal Pozzo et al, 2019;Duxson et al, 2007b;McLellan et al, 2011), geopolymer samples present a greater sustainability compared with PC counterparts, and some studies even indicated that the energy consumed and carbon footprints emitted by geopolymer production were significantly lower in comparison with those associated with PC sample preparation (Hassan et al, 2019;Sandanayake et al, 2018;Taylor, 2013), which were mainly associated with the avoidance of limestone calcination (Dal Pozzo et al, 2019), however, (Ma et al, 2018;Ouellet-Plamondon and Habert, 2015) also indicated that not all alkali-activated binders presented a lower global warming potential (GWP) in comparison with blended cements via Feret equation, and they indicated that one-part geopolymer seemed to be a more promising binder concerning sustainability. Meanwhile, compared with the precursors, the production of alkali used in the preparation of samples was still an energyintensive process, therefore, (Dal Pozzo et al, 2019) suggested the use of sustainable energy supplies such as hydrothermal route in its production, whereas (Salas et al, 2018) indicated that using NaOH in geopolymer concrete, which was produced from solar salt, would led to a great reduction in the overall environmental impacts related with sample preparation. Recently, reactive magnesia has been used as the activator in alkali-activated binders (Jin et al, 2013;Jin et al, 2014) due to the lower environmental impacts associated with its production Unluer, 2016, 2017), and the results also indicated that use of reactive magnesia could alleviate the shrinkage of samples due to its expansion as a result of magnesia hydration (Jin et al, 2013;Jin et al, 2014).…”

“…clearly indicates that geopolymer samples made by GGBS and PFA show much lower overall environmental burdens in comparison with PC samples with the same w/b ratios, which could be attributed to the relatively lower inputs and outputs associated with the collection of PFA and GGBS as they were regarded as pure industry waste in this study. Though the content of alkali used is much lower than precursors during geopolymer preparation, it still occupied the majority of environmental impacts as the manufacturing process of these chemicals such as NaOH was still energy-intensive, and more sustainable approaches should be adopted with respect to the alkali production(Dal Pozzo et al, 2019;Salas et al, 2018). Besides, the figure also shows that the points of fossil fuels are the highest than the rest environmental impacts in all these three groups.…”

Life-Cycle Assessment in the Polymeric Sector: A Comprehensive Review of Application Experiences on the Italian Scale

“…Tugnoli et al carried out a LCA analysis aiming at evaluating the replacement of the conventional cementitious binders in the passive fire protection (PFP) systems with geopolymer-based matrices [ 86 ], because of their high thermal stability and low thermal conductivity [ 83 , 87 ]. They compared the environmental and economic performance of a PFP geopolymer with a commercial cement, having similar fireproofing properties, that was used as reference.…”

Characterization of Fly Ash Alkali Activated Foams Obtained Using Sodium Perborate Monohydrate as a Foaming Agent at Room and Elevated Temperatures

“…More specifically, research in the area of sintered and non-sintered foam materials, based on the process of alkali activation, is currently extremely active (Zhao et al, 2010;Chen et al, 2011;Hajimohammadi et al, 2017a;Rabelo Monich et al, 2018;Rincon, 2019). The aforementioned foams present one of the most promising types of AA materials, given their high performance and low environmental footprint in comparison to foams produced by other methods (Dal Pozzo et al, 2019). They are known to offer relatively high strength and good insulation, as well as being non-combustible up to high temperatures (Bajare et al, 2019).…”