Estimating the environmental impacts of carbon emissions from fuel consumption during construction activities

Abstract

Nowadays, there is a great concern about the environmental issues such as global warming. In the construction industry, traditional construction consumed huge amount of fuels and produce a large amount of carbon emissions that affect the environment. The aim of this study is to estimate the environmental impacts on global warming potential (GWP from fuel consumption during building construction activities by plants and machineries. The methodology that is used in this study is Midpoint Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA). GaBi software has been used for the LCIA purposes. The findings revealed that there was a great impact from construction plants and machineries on GWP. Three types of machineries namely tower crane, lorry, and concrete mixer truck have been analysed in this study. Thed concrete mixer truck was found to be the highest contribution of global warming potential with the highest capacity of engine power. Results also shown that the global warming potential value for tower crane JT170-H10 and Potain H30/30C were 2.31E005 kg CO2 Eq and 2.37E005 kg CO2 Eq respectively. Meanwhile GWP for for Nissan lorry, Isuzu lorry and ZZ1257M3641 concrete mixer truck were 2.27E005 kg CO2 Eq, 2.24E005 kg CO2 Eq and 2.74E006 kg CO2 Eq respectively. The total global warming potential for all of these machineries were estimated to be around 3.7E006 kg CO2 Eq. Consequently, the concrete mixer truck were identified to contributed the highest carbon emissions because of the long usage duration and the engine power as well. Followed by the Potain H30/30C and JT170-H10. Moreover, Nissan lorry and Isuzu lorry were found to be the lowest contribution of carbon emissions. It can be concluded that the construction activities should take more consideration on the fuel consumption in order to reduce the GWP. Modern and efficient plants and machineries could help to reduce the fuel consumption and CO2 emissions.