ASPECTOS AMBIENTAIS DO CICLO DE VIDA DA TAIPA DE PILÃO

Abstract

Rammed Earth is a construction technique that has become important for sustainability due its lower embodied energy and carbon of extraction, production and construction phases. However, there aren’t many studies of rammed earth life cycle, especially with “cradle to cradle” boundaries. This study aims to asses environmental aspects of rammed earth walls since extraction phase until reuse phase (recycling and reversibility). Therefore, four cases of rammed earth walls were chosen, being different from the use, or not, of cement as stabilizer and the use of dynamic or manual compaction. Life cycle assessment (LCA) was the method applied to this study, in order to quantify environmental impacts indicators from renewable and non-renewable resources. As a result, the energy spent (MJ), carbon dioxide emission (g) and greenhouse gases emission (g) – GHG – were evaluated to show which phases are the most environmentally harmful and which rammed earth construction technology harms the most the environment. One thing the results indicated was that the transport phase is the most harmful one, releasing more carbon dioxide and GHG than all the others, but the cement stabilizer walls also harms the environment at production phase as well. Another thing was that the compaction process does not influence environmental aspects as much as any other activity or use of stabilizers, meaning that even though to use dynamic compaction, electric energy is spent, the dynamic equipment is still more practical, as it is easy to handle, it speeds the construction process and standardize wall layer compaction.