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This paper describes the influence of biomass ash (BA) from wooden chips processing on the properties of magnesium potassium phosphate cement (MKPC) mortar. The MKPC belongs to chemically bonded cementitious binders and is formed through the reaction between the dead burned magnesia (MgO), KH2PO4 and water. The dead burned magnesia powder as well as the biomass ash were first analysed by XRF, particle size distribution and specific density. In the production of MKPC-based composites, the biomass ash was used in th...

Foam glass is one of the materials for which it is possible to use glass waste of lower quality, which cannot be used for the production of classic glass products. Foam glass aggregate is a very interesting raw material, which, although it does not reach the quality of conventional foamed glass, but has a number of very interesting properties, thanks to which it can be used for the production of composites with a very good ratio of thermal insulation, acoustic and mechanical properties. The paper describes the res...

Alkali-activated aluminosilicates and geopolymers in the dry-state are typical dielectrics which is a limiting factor for their utilization in new sophisticated ways in construction industry. Nevertheless, such an issue can be solved by using various electrically conductive admixtures to attain reasonable electrical properties that ensure new functional properties, such as self-heating or self-sensing. Self-heating ability is attained by the addition of electrically conductive aggregates or sufficient amount of me...

Efficient management of operating costs, processes and premises usage has currently become one of the basic requirements of building owners and operators. This results in an effort being made to optimize these costs in order to provide comfort and safety of both the employees and people present in the buildings, while not wasting basic operating media and human labour at the same time. Such optimization is dealt with by Facility Management. Its concept is slightly diverse in different countries as the definition o...

The printer?s building and its associated operating costs are usually (after its payroll) the company?s second highest expense and a major factor in determining its environmental impact. The energy consumed in buildings is about 25-40% of final energy consumption, plus the related carbon footprint. Some printers have re-invented their working environment to improve their overall economic and environmental efficiency ? a ?lean and green? strategy. It must be recognized that the printing industry is part of an ecosy...

The construction sector is one of the most material-intensive and power-consuming industries having a negative impact on the environment. The adverse environmental factors include greenhouse gas emissions, depletion of natural raw materials, extensive landfilling or dumping in the sea. In this regard, resource conservation, waste minimization, as well as the reduction of harmful substances emissions into the atmosphere, hydrosphere and soil are considered currently as the most significant environmental challenges....

In the presented study, new types of lightweight plasters for passive moderation of interior climate were designed and tested. The examined plasters were composed of blended mineral binder (cement-lime or gypsum-lime), silica sand, perlite, chemical additives, and batch water. For the basic characterization of studied materials, bulk density, specific density, and total open porosity were measured. The mechanical resistance of the developed plasters was assessed in flexural and compressive strength tests. The ther...

Magnesium oxychloride (MOC) cement-based composites were studied in the presented paper. As filler, silica sand was used and partially replaced with fly ash from coal combustion. First, the chemical composition and basic physical properties of raw materials were tested. For the hardened composites, bulk density, specific density, and total open porosity were measured. Among mechanical parameters, flexural and compressive strengths were determined. The thermal performance of composites was studied using a transient...

One of the most common areas of wood use is the creation of composite materials based on it. Moreover, active research on preliminary heat treatment of wood filler in the production of various composites has been carried out in recent years. This is due to the fact that heat treatment of wood is an environmentally friendly method that allows changing its color and performance properties, as well as reduce various negative factors: the impact of fungi and other biological organisms, shrinkage and warping in conditi...

To address the global energy problem, energy from the solar source remains the most encouraging solution for buildings with a difficult-to-achieve goal such as achieving zero net energy consumption. In a solar thermal system, integrated solar collectors in buildings can convert the absorbed solar energy into thermal energy and can be better exploited in an area of the facade, while acting as an integral component of the building envelope, with good sun exposure. The aesthetic character and functionality of this te...

The massive depletion of natural resources, together with the inefficient use of end-of-life materials, results in the generation of vast amounts of waste. The waste material recycling poses a challenge for the present generation and alteration of current material streams needs to be reconsidered to mitigate the consequent environmental burdens. The construction industry produces several millions of tons of brick debris which remain landfilled or, at the best, are used as a substitute for natural aggregates. Howev...

A responsible approach both to the environment and the principles of sustainable development in recent years not only concerns the corporate ecology itself, but it also overlaps into the field of design and construction of buildings. The concept of sustainable construction of buildings, which is based on three main pillars of sustainability, including the quality of the environment, social and cultural aspects as well as economic efficiency, is closely related to it. The main tasks of sustainable construction incl...

Sustainability is a criterion defined since the 1980s, essential in all areas of activity, without which development cannot be acheived. Thermal insulation mattresses produced using sheep wool, successfully meet the conditions imposed by this criterion. This type of building material ensures the responsible use of non-renewable natural resources, the possibility of reuse and recycling of materials, contributes to environmental protection and pollution reduction, energy saving and provides a hygienic and healthy li...

In remote, hard-to-reach areas, renewable energy resources such as the sun or wind are available and can be used to produce green electricity at competitive prices. The disadvantage is that we do not always have the source of energy available (sun at night or continuous wind). This disadvantage can be overcome by using hybrid combinations of two or more renewable energy sources together with the storage of the energy produced, thus ensuring the supply of electricity at very good performance levels and with low cos...

In the current global context where we talk about the depletion of conventional fuel resources and their impact on the environment, we find that it is necessary to integrate renewable energy sources/resources in new constructions, but also adapt existing constructions in order to reduce energy consumption. This article presents a system with solar thermal collectors combined with PCM phase change materials. During operation, some of that thermal energy may be diverted to a storage system where it is maintained for...

It is known that laminated wood structures are widely used in construction industry due to the advantages of the resulting monolithic composition. However, despite the large number of positive qualities, wood as a filler has certain disadvantages that can reduce the service life of products made of a wood composite material. Thus, wood filler in the process of hardening and drying of composite material, as well as during operation of structures made of this material, can alternately shrink and swell depending on a...

When designing a passive house, the emphasis is not only on passive measures consisting mainly of thermal protection and stability of the buildings, but also on the price demand of each of the proposed structures. At present, new construction solutions are often encountered in construction practice [1]. These solutions are not yet tested. The paper deals with energy-efficient buildings in terms of reducing building heat loss. One such solution is to use thermal insulation above wooden rafters. Using the thermal in...

For energy-efficient houses, it is necessary to design a suitable thermal insulation of the building envelope. One of the most problematic areas of the single-layer masonry walls is the plinth. It is the first layer of masonry wall on the foundation structure. The requirements of architects and structural engineers for plinth solutions are often in contradiction. Passive houses belong to the category of buildings that have very low energy consumption for heating of buildings [1]. However, their overall energy perf...

This article is focused on the alkali activation of aluminosilicates prepared from industrial waste obtained from the final grinding of bricks during their production. The ceramic waste powder as a precursor with water glass-sodium hydroxide mixture as activator are utilized for the production of alkali-activated aluminosilicates, which represent a promising way for design of cement-free environmentally friendly binders. Usage of such materials in building industry for development of new materials have a very good...

The paper shows the studies of methods for assessing of monetary and natural efficiency of energy-saving procedures in civil construction within comparative conditions. The groups of energy-saving procedures were identified by procedures for saving, procedures for losses reducing, procedures for resource consumption reducing. The factors that influence the assessment of energy-saving procedures are listed and the coefficients of comparable conditions in the assessment are justified. Methods for calculating the coe...

The article deals with setting of the degradation of fibre-cement panels containing polyvinyl-alcohol (PVA) fibres. The degradation is being studied with a help of a soaking ? drying test. It is a long-time test, which is one of the series of tests (hot water test, frost resistance test, shrinking of panels, UV test), by which the degradation of panels is determined. The motivation for carrying out this test lies in searching for a substitute of asbestos-cement panels that cannot be used due to carcinogenic asbest...

Measuring tools are one of the main tool groups, which subgroup, manual measuring tools play a decisive role for further development of the measuring tools and machinery for wood processing. Nowadays a wide range of these tools used in construction sites, workshops, studios, households and in manufacturing for quality control operations, measurement inspection and other. Depending on woodworks diversity and processing method, the manual measuring tools have various functions, shapes and uses. The diversity of tool...

The paper presents some experimental study about fatigue properties modifications in Ni-Ti alloys on heating. The shape memory of alloys is used many times by heating and cooling and/or loading and unloading. The stability of material characteristics as transformation temperatures and mechanical behavior, during thermal or stress cycling is an important consideration in developing suitable alloys. Although shape memory alloys can be subjected to both thermal and stress cycling, it is necessary to investigate these...

Although the theme has been studied for more than a decade, the green transformations of buildings are limited in practice and often new buildings, by large private or public estates, promoted and publicized it to gain public support. Is it possible to think about a widespread action to ?green? our cities? If in other European countries the responsive-ness to this issue is certainly greater, in Italy there is still too little attention on this topic (in facts some people seem to be still more focused on economic e...

This paper deals with validation of an enhanced mathematical model for description of coupled heat and moisture transport which is able to model ice forming processes. This phenomenon is usually neglected because of computational difficulties even if it has a significant influence on heat and moisture transport. For the sake of model validation, data gathered by means of semi-scale experiment was used, analyzing a hygrothermal performance of a real building assembly ? an external wall. The wall was exposed to dyna...

Electrical cables are one of the key components of green building technologies. They are crucial for the operating of many green building technologies (e.g. power transfer from the solar cell to other building electric devices). For fire safety level assessment of electrical cables installed in green buildings are used their fire characteristics. The reaction to fire is the fundamental and most important fire characteristic of electrical cables. Nevertheless, it is used almost exclusively in the prescriptive appro...

Concrete is a widely used construction material. Extraction and processing of raw materials used for its production requires a lot of energy and poses threats to the environment. At present, in accordance to the idea of sustainable development and close circuit economy, it is recommended to aim at the maximum reduction of raw materials by replacing primary materials with secondary raw material (recycled materials) or industrial by-products. One of the pro-ecologic attitudes is introducing secondary wastes from the...

The article addresses the problem of such a common phenomenon as dysbacteriosis, according to medical experts in Kazakhstan, up to 90% of citizens are susceptible to disruption of the intestinal microflora. It was mainly influenced by the economic crisis of recent years, as well as environmental problems that adversely affected the nutritional structure of the population. One of the way to solve this issue is the use of probiotics, contributing to the normalization of the intestinal microflora to have a regulating...

Construction and subsequent operation of buildings fall among the main consumers of material and energy resources, while contributing to environmental pollution. Sustainable building construction therefore responds to the requirements of sustainable development and introduces a new approach to the design, construction and operation of buildings with the aim to reduce negative impacts on operating costs and thus on the environment. Operating costs generally represent the sum of the costs incurred for the operation ...

This paper presents the experimental results regarding the evolution into time of the road concrete quality with blast furnace slag BS, obtained by the UPV test for measuring the propagation velocity of the ultrasonic pulses compared with the compressive strengths of mechanical tests The UPV and the compressive strengths of the concrete containing blast furnace slag were determined at the age of 28, 100 and 150 days on 150 mm cubes on road concrete made with conventional materials and on road concrete with blast f...

Gypsum composites with different lightweight aggregates were studied. The importance of gypsum as one of the most environmentally friendly building binder increases nowadays and new ways of its utilization are searched. Using of aggregates in the gypsum is generally not necessary, because gypsum does not shrink, but they can be used for economic reasons or to improve the thermal or fire properties of the gypsum material. We studied the structure and properties of the gypsum composites with three types of lightweig...

The energy consumed by buildings accounts for approximately 40% of the total consumption and one-third of the greenhouse gases emissions around the globe. And as the demand for energy increases rapidly, a way of improving the utilization of latent energy around us is accomplished by the use of the Phase Changing Materials (PCM) in the building insulation to reduce the energy consumption rate by one of the PCM application categories, passive, active and free cooling methods. In this paper, an experimental model was...

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) play an important role in the IAQ evaluation process. Chemical contaminants emitted by dry building material and indoor equipment influence long-term indoor air quality. VOCs adversely affect both occupant comfort, productivity and health. Most of the health hazards related to VOCs emissions occur during the first months of occupation or after refurbishing the building. At present, most people generally spend up to 90% of their daily time in the indoor environment. Humans spend al...

The reduction of carbon dioxide emissions become the global effort of entire scientific community. Various environmental friendly technologies are currently developed and also applied worldwide. The concrete is the most used building material on Earth and its production is still rising. Its production is related to huge emissions of carbon dioxide due to Portland cement production and generation of waste such as concrete slurry waste (CSW). Sedimented CSW contains considerable amount of cement, calcium and fine fi...

Natural hydraulic lime (NHL) belongs to traditional binders used in civil engineering for centuries. Hydraulic lime (both natural or artificial) may be considered as binder which properties represents a transition between air lime (pure CaO or Ca(OH)2) and Portland cement (PC). It means that NHL contains hydraulic compounds (as PC) and CaO/Ca(OH)2. The significant difference is in calcination temperature ? NHL is calcined at lower temperature than Portland clinker i.e. there is lower energy consumption (and carbon...

Blast furnace slag (BFS) is used for preparation of common cements, sulfate-resisting and chemical-resisting cements and cement mortars. Using BFS as a concrete or mortar addition results in several advantageous properties such as high resistance to acid attack (sulphuric, nitric acids), low chloride permeability, high durability and low capillary porosity. Because of these properties using BFS in cement composites can decrease the effect of biodegradation induced by various microorganisms. Bio-corrosion is caused...

Porosity belongs to basic characteristics of building materials. It is a characteristic of solid or semi-rigid materials, which contain a lot of tiny and uniformly distributed cavities or holes of various shape and origin. Porosity decreases specific weight of materials, increases their insulation and other characteristics ? for example absorbability. It is defined as a ratio of pores volume in a specific amount of solid and the total volume of this amount. In the article the use of the modern confocal scanning mi...

Occupational health and safety is an important work discipline that must be included in the working life. Especially, developed countries have been able to place this discipline in working life, while developing countries have still problems. These problems take place both in terms of legislation and practice. The situation is similar to that of developing countries, in Turkey. The construction sector is in line with the development status of a country. The construction sector contributes both directly and indirec...

Currently, construction industry puts greater emphasis on sustainability. Exploitation of clear materials, methods and pressure on zero waste policy represent priority in architecture and civil engineering. The new directives and laws in individual European countries help to implement these environmental aspects throughout the whole life cycle of construction projects. Cost issue represents one of barrier and common problem to implement these aspects into the construction process. This is not just about perceiving...

Biochar is a product of pyrolysis of biomass such as plant residues, organic wastes or etc. Being highly porous material that slowly releases nutrients, biochar is considered as an effective alternative fertilizer. It is reported that biochar properties are depending on the pyrolysis regime (e.g. pyrolysis peak temperature and duration), however information about quantitative dependences remains poor, especially for biochars made of specific substrates such as chicken manure. In this study, properties of biochars ...

The construction sector is one of the largest consumers of energy and non-renewable natural resources, but also an important increasing factor of global warming by producing greenhouse gases, especially CO2. In Europe, about 30% of CO2 emissions and 36% of all greenhouse gases emissions are a direct or indirect environmental consequences of the construction sector. In the sustainable development contex, the possibility of recycling, reuse and reintegration in nature, environmental protection and efficient manageme...

A new joint configuration system has been developed to achieve a higher strength and ductility. The joint system consist of a reinforced concrete wall and a composite steel-concrete beam. The study aims for an experimental and a numerical part in a FEM program Abaqus 6.13. The program consist to reproduce the behavior of the joints and the materials variation. The purpose of the paper is to investigate the main parameters that affect the response on the contribution of the steel-concrete materials that influences ...

The paper proposes a new strategy against the global warming, which if applied on large scale is able to turn our cities into green oasis, decreasing their actual carbon foot-print and increasing their carbon offset. Our approach is to replace conventional roofs with integrated rooftop greenhouses IRTG, which are connected with the interior of the building by controlled flows of energy, oxygen, carbon dioxide and water. The main IRTG feature is the tight human-plant symbiosis ensured by a two flows ventilation sys...

This article is focused on the issue of lightweighted plasters. Lightweighted plaster can contribute to the contemporary tendencies of higher thermal insulating abilities of all structural materials with sufficient mechanical characteristics. Two mixtures were designed with the lightweight expanded perlite aggregate. The first one contained only expanded perlite as aggregate, whereas in the second one, the plaster silica sand was used instead of one-half of the lightweight aggregate. Lime-based components with adm...

Presented in the article common forms of so called underspace (space under bridges, viaducts or flyovers) revival show that there are organizational and design solutions, thanks to which these kind of areas can be transformed to some extent in order to improve not only their functional program or esthetics, but also their specific and disadvantageous environmental conditions. In the article there are presented results of research concerning available and practically applied solutions within architectural and plann...

This paper deals with new trends in fire testing of electrical cables. At present, the most widely used tests of electrical cables are reaction to fire tests. The cable systems powering electrical devices which have to remain operational for a certain period of time under fire conditions are additionally subjected to circuit integrity maintenance testing. New trends in cable fire tests include tests of critical heat flux, testing the effect of cable inclination, current load, voltage and frequencies to the rate of...

Due to EU environmental legislation focused on the reduction of waste, all post-consumer tyres must be reused, retreated or recycled. Rubber derived from post-consumer tyres is utilised in a number of engineering applications, however the market solutions for steel components are still not discovered. The main objective of the research was to develop the method of the valuable steel tyre cord application in the construction sector. Studies were conducted on recycled fibres modified concrete properties to examine t...

Magnesium oxychloride (MOC) cement, also called Sorel cement is a type of non-hydraulic cement, formed by mixing magnesium oxide powder with magnesium chloride solution. It was developed in 1867, shortly after the invention of Portland cement. MOC cement has many properties superior to Portland cement including lower carbon emission, lower thermal conductivity, higher fire resistance and excellent bonding ability to a wide range of fillers. For these advantages, MOC cement has been conventionally used for making f...

In southern Algeria, energy consumption is inevitable due to the hot climate and the summer period, which extends for more than half a year, it is necessary to take a strategic approach to ensure the sustainability and maximum comfort while reducing energy through passive and active architectural. Forthis reason, to reduce this consumption, it is necessary to improve the performance of the building. As a result, windows and ventilation become key points to improve in terms of Losses. These two elements may be at t...

The purpose of this paper is to study some mix design on different mortar mixtures whose results aim at obtaining high mechanical strengths, especially for flexural strength, with low water absorption, to prevent material degradation due to the action of various environmental factors and also to ensure their durability. From the category of cement additions widely used in the current practice due to their pozzolanic and hydraulic activity in latent condition, we refer to silica fume (SF) which is a mineral additio...