Building Simulation

, Volume 11, Issue 2, pp 235–244 | Cite as

A thermodynamic method to calculate energy & exergy consumption and CO2 emission of building materials based on economic indicator

  • Huahui Xie
  • Guangcai Gong
  • Mushu Fu
  • Ping Wang
  • Long Li
Research Article Building Thermal, Lighting, and Acoustics Modeling
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  • 128 Downloads

Abstract

Due to the data deficiency in developing countries like China, the calculation of the building production phase only considers a few major materials. To solve this problem, three indexes are put forward, which are cost-based energy, cost-based exergy and cost-based carbon, and a new concept, the equivalent coefficient of thermodynamic cost, is presented based on social economic indicator, energy intensity. Then a thermodynamic method is built up to estimate the energy, exergy consumption and CO2 emission of building materials in production phase. Compared to the conventional calculation, this thermodynamic method takes full account of every material in the BOQ (bill of quantity), and the data used in the method, energy intensity, can be found in government publications. The production phase of the case building is analyzed using this method, and results show that the production phase accounts for 12.34% of the life cycle energy consumption, also contributes 15.48% towards the life cycle CO2 emissions. The embodied energy of the case building is about 4.995 GJ/m2 which matches the results from other LCA research, thus verifies the validity of the proposed calculation. This method is practical and significant in improving sustainable building assessment tools and enacting energy policies in building sector.

Keywords

energy intensity equivalent coefficient of thermodynamic cost energy consumption exergy consumption CO2 emission life cycle analysis 
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Notes

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the financial support from the National Key Technology Support Program (No. 2015BAJ03B00), National 863 Program of China, the Major Science and Technology Projects of Hunan Province, China (No. 2010FJ1013), the International Science and Technology Cooperative in Project of China (No. 2010DFB63830).

Supplementary material

12273_2017_401_MOESM1_ESM.pdf (642 kb)
A thermodynamic method to calculate energy & exergy consumption and CO2 emission of building materials based on economic indicator

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Copyright information

© Tsinghua University Press and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2017

Authors and Affiliations

  • Huahui Xie
    • 1
  • Guangcai Gong
    • 1
  • Mushu Fu
    • 1
  • Ping Wang
    • 1
  • Long Li
    • 1
  1. 1.Department of Building Environment and Energy Engineering, College of Civil EngineeringHunan UniversityChangsha, HunanChina

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