New paper demonstrates the reuse potential of concrete slabs
© 2024 EPFL
80%! This is the amount of embodied carbon that new floor systems made of reused concrete can save on average! We designed two floor systems for housing and office buildings, with reinforced concrete reused in bending to make the most of its existing properties. A parametric LCA with 20,000 simulations shows drastic embodied #carbon cuts compared to new flat concrete slabs, with solutions as low as 5 kgCO2e/m2, probably a record for building slabs.
The cherry on the slab? You save up to 94 % on embodied carbon when combining reused concrete with reused steel.
More details on these ultra-low carbon floor systems in our new paper: “Reuse of cut concrete slabs in new buildings for circular ultra-low-carbon floor designs”, published in the Journal of Cleaner Production, with authors Célia Küpfer (Structural Xploration Lab), Numa Bertola (University of Luxembourg), Corentin Fivet (Structural Xploration Lab).
Link to the paper: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2024.141566
This research is part of Célia Küpfer Ph.D. thesis on the reuse of saw-cut concrete in architecture (funded by the SNSF through the doc.CH program) and the Interdisciplinary “RE:CRETE Prognosis” project (funded by EPFL ENAC).