Hosam M. Saleh
Mohamed M. Dawoud
Amal I. HassanEditorial on the Research Topic
Sustainable and eco-friendly building materials
The environmental studies demonstrate that global warming is worsening and hurting an increasing number of people, combating climate change has clearly become a top concern. Worldwide, the acceleration of climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions is beginning to have a direct impact on people’s lives, and buildings generate nearly 40% of annual global carbon dioxide emissions (Sovacool et al., 2021). As a result, one of the most significant worldwide challenges to lowering carbon dioxide emissions is to reform the building sector. There are numerous significant trends in sustainable architecture that will assist lower the building industry’s carbon impact (Ali et al., 2020).
Nowadays, concrete is utilized in almost every structure, including buildings, bridges, residences, and infrastructure. With a growing emphasis on sustainability in recent years, structural engineers are being pushed to achieve both traditional design criteria and the developing norms that promote sustainable building (Miller et al., 2021).
Green composites are a type of biocomposites in which a bio-based polymer lattice is reinforced by common strands, and they represent a growing field in polymer research. Concrete is a composite material composed of coarse granular material (the filler aggregate) encased in a hard matrix of material (the cement or binder) that fills the space between the aggregate particles and bonds them together (Mindess et al., 1981).
A biocomposite is a cement or polymer matrix combined with organic fibers derived from agricultural and forest resources, either as a fiber crop or as waste (Saleh et al., 2020a) (Saleh et al., 2020b). A new/added topic is the use of vegetable fibers as reinforcement in cement-based materials. Several researches have also reported on the incorporation of plant-based natural fibers into cement concrete. Various plant fibers, such as cellulose fiber, lignocellulose waste, sugar can bagasse, wheat and eucalyptus, coconut fiber or shell, waste tea leaves, or processed waste tea, are utilized in the making of cement and bio-composites (Mindess et al., 1981) (Parameswaran et al., 1989).
In our laboratory, new trends in waste stabilization have been implemented, including cement with difficult waste items such as cement kiln dust, in order to limit the consumption of cement (Saleh et al., 2019a, Saleh et al., 2020d; Saleh et al., 2021), nanomaterials (Saleh et al., 2019c, Saleh et al., 2019b), natural clays (Saleh, 2014) or polymers (Eskander et al., 2021) (Saleh et al., 2020c) to make lightweight bricks with the right characteristics for use in construction applications or as a stabilizing substance for hazardous wastes.
Green construction refers to a structure constructed in an ecologically friendly manner that is efficient in the use of energy and resources. The environment is the primary focus of green buildings; the economic benefits of a long-term green transition weigh significantly. When compared to conventional buildings, green buildings frequently result in lower operational expenditures, increasing profitability for developers and proprietors (Sun et al., 2022).
Furthermore, the efficacy of renewable thermal insulation materials is determined by their ability to reduce heat transfer via solid and gaseous conduction, thermal radiation, and, in certain situations, convection (Dreißigacker, 2021). The heat transmission mechanism for thermal insulation materials is mostly determined by the material’s structure and density (Le et al., 2021). With the growing requirement for sustainability, the material used for thermal insulation has grown increasingly significant in the modern construction (Füchsl et al., 2022). Today, multi-purpose solutions, such as thermal and acoustic insulation, are now widely used in building construction. So, natural fibers are mostly used in the building sector for their hygrothermal qualities would considerably improve their market attractiveness (Santoni et al., 2019).
Therefore, this Research Topic entitled” Sustainable and Eco-friendly Building Materials” has been proposed to know modern applications of sustainable building materials that represent effective external shielding and achieve those standard values for the stabilization of hazardous waste, including radioactive waste. Onyelowe et al. have stated that the global warming potential based on the dose of cement Portland cement contributes about 90% of the total result. In addition, the result of the ground acidification potential of concrete mixtures in this study showed that the inferior cement mixture “C340-FAg658-FA0-SF15” has human toxicity, carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic showed additive effects. Finally, the addition of Fly ash (FA) and silica fume (SF) in concrete was found to have a low effect on the environmental impact indices due to the lower dose of cement. FA and SF are used in concrete production by relative replacement of cement, which indicates a lower proportion of cement. The model predictions also showed that an artificial nerve network with a performance index of 0.986 (4.8%) showed a critical superiority in predicting compressive strength for FA-SF concrete over evolutionary polynomial regression, 0.951 (8.7%), genetic programming, 0.94 (9.5%) and gene expression programming, 0.93 (10%). Green roofs have gained popularity as new roofing surfaces due to their ability to provide several environmental and social advantages. So, the study of Kader et al. demonstrated critical data about green roofs and growth mediums to aid in the positive selection of substrates for green roof technology. They also referred to the characteristics of selecting a sustainable substrate for green roofs while preserving the climatic conditions of a particular area. Furthermore, the research suggested that future studies be climatically specific and conform to acknowledged norms and recommendations, as well as define rules for dry climatic zones, which are heavily influenced by evaporation owing to temperature variations. Ahmad et al.’s study aimed to experimentally measure the internal and external temperatures of a building in Peshawar for validation using CFD modeling. As well as simulating the building by adding locally available, natural, and recycled insulation materials to the roof to keep the interior environment within a comfortable temperature range, especially in winter and summer. The study concluded that the use of waste with low thermal conductivity improves positively and significantly, the temperatures in winter and summer, and at the same time solves the energy crisis and overcomes the adverse climate effects.
The main objective of Al-Khateeb et al.’s study was to find out the effect of cement/asphalt percentage (C/A), temperature, and loading frequency on the fragmentation resistance of asphalt binders using statistical analysis, using uncured condition and short-term aging condition in a rolling thin film oven (RTFO). The one-way ANOVA test used in this study’s analysis revealed that there is a significant difference in the C/A proportion between the tested unaged and RTFO-aged cement-modified asphalt by the dynamic shear rheometer test. The correlation test revealed that changing the loading frequency has a substantial effect on the rutting parameter at different temperatures and C/A percentages.
We hope that readers will find these papers interesting and beneficial in their innovative research in this field. The Editors of this Research Topic are like to express their appreciation to all of the authors for their significant contributions, as well as to the professional reviewers for their time, devotion, and valuable comments.
Author contributions
All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work and approved it for publication.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
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Keywords: sustainability, building materials, eco-materials, cemenitious materials, cement composites
Citation: Saleh HM, Dawoud MM and Hassan AI (2023) Editorial: Sustainable and eco-friendly building materials. Front. Built Environ. 9:1160556. doi: 10.3389/fbuil.2023.1160556
Received: 07 February 2023; Accepted: 13 February 2023;
Published: 20 February 2023.
Edited and reviewed by:
Paul Awoyera, Covenant University, NigeriaCopyright © 2023 Saleh, Dawoud and Hassan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Hosam M. Saleh, hosam.saleh@eaea.org.eg, hosamsaleh70@yahoo.com