Concrete Products covers the issues that attract producers of ready mixed and manufactured concrete focusing on equipment and material technology, market development and management topics.
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NEWS SCOPE TECHNOLOGY Berkeley Lab releases free life cycle energy, environmental model for structural materials A new software tool for design, engineering and construction professionals studies all phases of a building's life cycle, from mate- rials acquisition through demolition, to de- termine its true environmental footprint. Developed under Portland Cement Asso- ciation sponsorship, the B-PATH model (Berkeley Lab Building Materials Pathways) estimates the energy, resources and envi- ronmental impacts associated with struc- tural materials' production; their effects on the energy use of a building during opera- tion; and, their impacts when the building is ultimately demolished and its con- stituent materials are reused, recycled, or disposed. Users can model concrete, steel, and lumber from their production, trans- portation, and construction until their end-of-life processes. B-PATH also lets users define which fuels and amount of "The key is having a tool grounded in sound science to perform a life cycle analysis—the data analysis, plus systems mass and energy balance modeling tech- niques, to estimate the inputs of fuels, materials, and resources associated with all relevant processes in the life cycle of a product or service," said B-PATH Develop- ment Team Leader Eric Masanet. The model incorporates both current prac- tice and best practice methods of production and construction to determine how they af- fect energy use. Users can tailor results to specific U.S. regions, which vary by climate, local and regional characteristics in materials supply chains, construction practices, and end-of-project-life pathways, as well as in the mix of fuels for electrical power supply sources and volume of water consumption. In 2009, according to the U.S. Depart- ment of Energy, commercial buildings ac- counted for nearly 20 percent of U.S. primary energy use, more than one-third of U.S. electricity use, and about 15 percent of U.S. direct natural gas use. There are more than 4.6 million commercial buildings in the United States, with more than 64 billion square feet of floor space. According to a 2010 National Research Council report, the human health damages associated with the amounts of electricity and natural gas consumed by U.S. commercial buildings may be on the order of $20 billion/year. The structure of a commercial building, B-PATH factors energy and environmental inputs for steel and wood in parallel manner to concrete, where raw materials are individually tracked. 14 | SEPTEMBER 2012 such as its concrete or steel frame, uses a larger quantity of materials that require high energy per weight to manufacture than any other element of the building. A building design that uses the optimum WWW.CONCRETEPRODUCTS.COM