Enhancing building energy efficiency and reducing carbon emissions through sustainable cement block admixtures

ABSTRACT

Buildings account for about 40% of total electricity use in the world for artificial cooling and artificial day lighting and they are also responsible for 40% CO₂ emissions. The reduction of energy consumption in the building sector is a major challenge to cope with the scarcity of fossil energy resources and the problem of climate change. Hence, to decrease energy consumption and contribute to reducing CO₂ emissions, different alternative building materials have been investigated. The aim of this paper is to study the effect of incorporation of fly ash, Ground Granulated Blast Furnace Slag (GGBS), ceramic waste powder (silica and alumina rich) and barite powder (as partial replacement to cement) on the thermal properties and thermal performance of the resulting cement blocks. This study also investigates the thermo-economic performance of building walls constructed with blocks of various cement blocks in distinct climatic zones of India. The building concept with the wall configuration (CC 50) demonstrated the greatest yearly air conditioning savings (0.37 and 0.34 $/m²) and the greatest annual reduction in carbon emissions (7.21 and 6.37 kg/kWh) in both hot-arid (Madras) and composite (Jabalpur) climatic zones.

KEYWORDS:

• Decrement factor
• time lag
• compressive strength
• thermo-economic analysis
• carbon emission mitigation

Acknowledgments

The authors extend their appreciation to Taif University, Saudi Arabia, for supporting this work through project number (TU-DSPP-2024-32).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Deanship of Scientific Research, Taif University.