Bio-based air ducts: The applicability of bio-based materials for the construction of air duct components.

Nowadays, air ducts components for ventilation used in offices, hospitals and schools are made from non-renewable materials mainly sheet metal and plastics. Continuing to feed the high demand of metals is a challenge and could result of depletion of natural resources. This raises the importance to look into renewable resources with a lower...

Building a sustainable future: a comparative life cycle assessment of a cross-laminated timber and a lightweight steel frame building

The Netherlands has faced rapidly increasing housing prices over the previous years. As a counter measure, the government is aiming to increase the construction of new houses from around 70 thousand annually to 100 thousand annually, to achieve 900 thousand new houses by 2030. At the same time the world is facing a climate crisis and the...

The future of concrete recycling: An integrated life cycle environmental and cost analysis on the hotspots to improve the demolition and recycling practices across Europe

Building construction is a material-intensive process known for depleting natural resources, mainly gravel and sand, used in concrete production. At the same time, building demolition generates large amounts of construction and demolition waste (CDW), primarily consisting of end-of-life (EOL) concrete, a significant waste flow occurring in...

Recovering critical raw materials from end-of-life multi-junction III-V/silicon solar cells: A criticality assessment of gallium, indium and silicon for large scale production of multi-junction III-V/silicon solar cells and an assessment of the environmental impacts and economic feasibility of recycling end-of-life multi-junction III-V/silicon solar panels

This thesis studies the criticality of gallium, indium and silicon for a 1GWp production of III-V/silicon solar cells and assesses the environmental impacts and economic costs \& benefits of a recycling process for these solar cells. III-V/silicon is an emerging solar cell technology, that is expected to enter the market in between 2025 and...

Environmental impact of the materials used in the Dutch heat transition

The Dutch government set two environmental goals by 2050. One of them is being climate neutral and the other one is to have a circular economy. In order to meet both goals in the best environmental conditions, extensive environmental research is required. This thesis is one of these researches and its main focus is on the climate neutral goal by...

The Eco-Costs of Material Scarcity, a Resource Indicator for LCA, Derived from a Statistical Analysis on Excessive Price Peaks

The availability of resources is crucial for the socio-economic stability of our society. For more than two decades, there was a debate on how to structure this issue within the context of life-Cycle assessment (LCA). The classical approach with LCA is to describe "scarcity" for future generations (100-1000 years) in terms of absolute...

Sustainability criteria and the bio-based materials sector in the Netherlands

Fossil fuels will run out in the foreseeable future. Out entire economic system is build upon fossil fuels and building up another base for this economic system is challenging. The only alternative for making materials that normally are derived from fossil fuels is the Bio-Based Economy. Materials in this way get made from biomass, such as sugar...