Publications related to Life-cycle assessment

Methods to assess the carbon footprint of structures involving UHPFRC elements

Eugen Brühwiler, Numa Joy Bertola, Antonina Hochuli

The development of Ultra-High Performance Fibre-Reinforced Cementitious Composite (UHPFRC) has enabled the design of lightweight constructions. Although the greenhouse gas emissions of UHPFRC per volume are higher than that of conventional concr ...

Kassel University Press2024

FLO:RE – A new floor system made of reused reinforced concrete and steel elements

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Numa Joy Bertola, Maléna Bastien Masse, Célia Marine Küpfer

Carefully extracting reinforced concrete (RC) elements from soon-to-be demolished structures and reusing them as load-bearing components is an emerging circular low-carbon alternative to building new structures. As floor construction typically accounts for ...

IABSE2024

Spatio-temporal patterns and drivers of CH4 and CO2 fluxes from rivers and lakes in highly urbanized areas

Alexandre Buttler

Gaseous carbon exchange at the water-air interface of rivers and lakes is an essential process for regional and global carbon cycle assessments. Many studies have shown that rivers surrounding urban landscapes can be hotspots for greenhouse gas (GHG) emiss ...

Elsevier2024

Is the powersave governor really saving power?

David Atienza Alonso, Luis Maria Costero Valero, Darong Huang

A frequency scaling governor is critical for the performance management of cloud servers, as it enhances energy efficiency and helps to control operational temperatures, thereby ensuring system reliability. However, our in-depth analysis of the application ...

2024

Comparative Exergy and Economic Assessment of Fossil and Biomass-Based Routes for Ammonia Production

François Maréchal, Daniel Alexander Florez Orrego

Due to the increasing concerns about the marked dependence on fossil resources and their intrinsic economic uncertainty, as well as motivated by more stringent environmental regulations, the pursuit of alternative energy resources for the synthetic fertili ...

Silesian University of Technology2023

Design of New Low-Carbon Floor Systems by Reusing Cut Cast-in-Place Concrete Pieces

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Numa Joy Bertola, Célia Marine Küpfer

As floors typically account for the largest share of a building embodied carbon footprint, new strategies to build low-carbon floors must be developed and implemented. Among these strategies, the reuse of existing components is a promising circular approac ...

Novus Press2023

Integration of Life Cycle Impact Assessment in Energy System Modelling

François Maréchal, Jonas Schnidrig, Manuele Domenico Margni, Justine Brun

The Paris agreement is the first-ever universally accepted and legally binding agreement on global climate change. It is a bridge between today’s and climate-neutrality policies and strategies before the end of the century. However, government and private ...

2023

The thermodynamic and life-cycle assessments of a novel charging station for electric vehicles in dynamic and steady-state conditions

Jan Van Herle, Hossein Pourrahmani, Chengzhang Xu

The current study performs the thermodynamic and life-cycle assessments (LCA) of a novel charging station in two system designs. The goal is to design an efficient charging station for electric vehicles with high efficiencies and low environmental impacts ...

Nature Portfolio2023

Regionalized Life Cycle Assessment of Food and Energy Systems

Xun Liao

To steer the sustainable transition in the food and energy sectors, reliable environmental data is required to answer environmental questions related to single agricultural crop, food product or energy technologies. Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been wid ...

EPFL2022

Two novel cogeneration charging stations for electric vehicles: Energy, exergy, economic, environment, and dynamic characterizations

Jan Van Herle, Hossein Pourrahmani, Chengzhang Xu

This paper suggests two novel designs for the electric vehicle charging stations using LiMn2O4 Lithium-ion battery and based on a Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) and absorption refrigeration cycle (ARC) technologies to provide electricity and cooling, respect ...

Elsevier2022

How to link sustainability assessments with local governance? – Connecting indicators to institutions and controversies

Claudia Rebeca Binder Signer, Albert Merino, Pekka Jaakko Halla

The concept of sustainability is growing in importance for local urban governance, and indicator-based assessments represent a popular means for its operationalization. While much effort has been spent developing the technical aspects of these assessments, ...

2022

Life cycle environmental assessment of retaining walls in unsaturated soils

Alessio Ferrari, Gianluca Speranza

Retaining structures above groundwater level support soils that are usually in a state of partial saturation and subject to the actions of atmospheric agents. The current design approach considers the possible extremes of soil conditions - either totally d ...

ELSEVIER2022

ECO2 framework assessment of limestone powder concrete slabs and columns

Hisham Tarek Mohamed Hafez

Producing limestone powder requires comparably far less energy than the production of ordinary Portland cement (OPC), making it a promising sustainable solution for partial replacement of OPC in concrete. Lower production energy could be translated into lo ...

ELSEVIER2022

Organic Rankine Cycle as the Waste Heat Recovery Unit of Solid Oxide Fuel Cell: A Novel System Design for the Electric Vehicle Charging Stations Using Batteries as a Backup/Storage Unit

Jan Van Herle, Hossein Pourrahmani, Chengzhang Xu

The novelty of this study is to suggest a novel design for electric vehicle charging stations using fuel cell technology. The proposed system benefits from the Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) to utilize the exhaust energy of the Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) st ...

MDPI2022

A life cycle analysis of novel lightweight composite processes: Reducing the environmental footprint of automotive structures

Véronique Michaud, Baris Çaglar, Colin Gomez, Vincent Werlen, Christian Rytka

In this study, three novel thermoplastic impregnation processes were analyzed towards automotive applications. The first process is thermoplastic compression resin transfer molding in which a glass fiber mat is impregnated in through thickness by a thermop ...

ELSEVIER SCI LTD2022

Towards a negative-emission society

Xiang Li

Negative carbon emissions are proved necessary to limit global temperature increase below 1.5C compared to pre-industrial levels. (a) Reducing carbon sources and (b) increasing negative emissions are two effective ways to achieve this goal. (a) involves th ...

EPFL2022

Whirling instability of an eccentric coated fibre

François Gallaire, Edouard Boujo, Shahab Eghbali, Ludovic Pierre Gustave Keiser

We study a gravity-driven viscous flow coating a vertical cylindrical fibre. The destabilisation of a draining liquid column into a downward moving train of beads has been linked to the conjunction of the Rayleigh-Plateau and Kapitza instabilities in the l ...

Cambridge University Press2022

Life cycle efficiency of solar shading systems: a proof-of-concept

Marilyne Andersen, Sergi Aguacil Moreno, Thomas Bernard Paul Jusselme, Nazanin Rezaei Oghazi

Solar control strategies are essential for the glare control and decreasing cooling needs or overheating risks (in the absence of active cooling system), however, they come with their own embodied energy. With the carbon neutrality objective looking at the ...

2021

Design of adaptive structures through energy minimization: extension to tensegrity

Gennaro Senatore, Yafeng Wang

This paper gives a new formulation to design adaptive structures through total energy optimization (TEO). This methodology enables the design of truss as well as tensegrity configurations that are equipped with linear actuators to counteract the effect of ...

2021

Stock-constrained truss design exploration through combinatorial equilibrium modeling

Jan Friedrich Georg Brütting

Reusing structural components has potential to reduce environmental impacts of building structures because it reduces new material use, energy consumption, and waste. When designing structures through reuse, available element characteristics become a desig ...

2021