Within this work,life cycle assessment modeling is used to determine top design priorities and quantitatively inform sustainable design decision-making for a prefabricated modular building.A case-study life-cycle asse...Within this work,life cycle assessment modeling is used to determine top design priorities and quantitatively inform sustainable design decision-making for a prefabricated modular building.A case-study life-cycle assessment was performed for a 5,000 ft2 prefabricated commercial building constructed in San Francisco,California,and scenario analysis was run examining the life cycle environmental impacts of various energy and material design substitutions,and a structural design change.Results show that even for a highly energy-efficient modular building,the top design priority is still minimizing operational energy impacts,since this strongly dominates the building life cycle’s environmental impacts.However,as an energy-efficient building approaches net zero energy,manufacturing-phase impacts are dominant,and a new set of design priorities emerges.Transportation and end-of-life disposal impacts were of low to negligible importance in both cases.展开更多
Latent heat energy storage through phase-change materials(PCMs)is one possible strategy to control interior temperatures in buildings,improve thermal comfort,and passively reduce building energy use associated with he...Latent heat energy storage through phase-change materials(PCMs)is one possible strategy to control interior temperatures in buildings,improve thermal comfort,and passively reduce building energy use associated with heating and cooling.While PCMs integrated into building structure elements have been studied since the 1970s,challenges of integrating PCMs into building materials while maintaining their heat storage benefits have limited their application in practice.The recent introduction of microencapsulated phase-change materials provides the energy storage capability of PCMs in micron-scale,chemically-inert capsules that can be easily integrated into composite materials such as gypsum wallboard and concrete.The size and physical properties of microencapsulated PCMs suggest that they will behave similarly to filler materials in concrete.Such filler materials are generally less than 125μm in diameter and can increase concrete strength when added to a mix.This study uses the compressive strength of hardened concrete mixes with varying amounts of PCM to evaluate the effect of PCM addition on concrete structural integrity.展开更多
基金the Stanford University Terman Faculty Fellowship,and the staff of Project Frog,for their generous support.
文摘Within this work,life cycle assessment modeling is used to determine top design priorities and quantitatively inform sustainable design decision-making for a prefabricated modular building.A case-study life-cycle assessment was performed for a 5,000 ft2 prefabricated commercial building constructed in San Francisco,California,and scenario analysis was run examining the life cycle environmental impacts of various energy and material design substitutions,and a structural design change.Results show that even for a highly energy-efficient modular building,the top design priority is still minimizing operational energy impacts,since this strongly dominates the building life cycle’s environmental impacts.However,as an energy-efficient building approaches net zero energy,manufacturing-phase impacts are dominant,and a new set of design priorities emerges.Transportation and end-of-life disposal impacts were of low to negligible importance in both cases.
基金supported by the Department of Energy under Award Number#DE-EE0003870.
文摘Latent heat energy storage through phase-change materials(PCMs)is one possible strategy to control interior temperatures in buildings,improve thermal comfort,and passively reduce building energy use associated with heating and cooling.While PCMs integrated into building structure elements have been studied since the 1970s,challenges of integrating PCMs into building materials while maintaining their heat storage benefits have limited their application in practice.The recent introduction of microencapsulated phase-change materials provides the energy storage capability of PCMs in micron-scale,chemically-inert capsules that can be easily integrated into composite materials such as gypsum wallboard and concrete.The size and physical properties of microencapsulated PCMs suggest that they will behave similarly to filler materials in concrete.Such filler materials are generally less than 125μm in diameter and can increase concrete strength when added to a mix.This study uses the compressive strength of hardened concrete mixes with varying amounts of PCM to evaluate the effect of PCM addition on concrete structural integrity.
