How can unused home construction materials be recycled for additional use? This is what a recent study published in Journal of Cleaner Production hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated pathways for improving materials recycling in the face of building renovations and upgrades. This study has the potential to help engineers, legislators, and the public better understand novel methods for improving recycling materials while ensuring minimal environmental impacts.
For the study, the researchers discussed a novel method called Building Information Modeling (BIM) that they propose could revolutionize recycling building materials through cataloging a building’s construction materials. The goal of the study was to ascertain BIM’s effectiveness in modeling building materials and accelerating its integration into commercial use. In the end, the researchers found that BIM successfully estimated building material compositions with 95 percent accuracy, which the researchers note enable enhanced methods for building materials recycling and reuse.
“Instead of relying on expensive equipment and a range of experts and specialists, our method is based on information that already exists,” said Georgios Triantafyllidis, who is a PhD student at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and lead author of the study. “Individually, this information may not be very valuable – a building regulation here, an architectural drawing there – but when we put the pieces of the puzzle together, a picture suddenly emerges that is far more comprehensive.”
The study was focused on detached houses—which are free-standing homes that are not attached to other properties—in Norway, with the researchers noting that 1101 detached houses were demolished between 2013 and 2022. The team also noted that 90 per cent of them are comprised of timber with only 7 percent being used for recycling.
What new discoveries regarding materials recycling will researchers make in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Sources: Journal of Cleaner Production, EurekAlert!
