In view of the ecological and social impact and the enormous quantities of materials used in the construction sector, this is a major lever for achieving climate and environmentally relevant savings in energy consumption, resource requirements and greenhouse gas emissions. Materials that are renewable or naturally occurring and can be made usable without major energy input ideally meet these requirements.
In the RE-FORM earth project, various solutions are being developed for the integration of clay in the construction industry:
- Creation of planning principles for the construction of deconstructable buildings with recyclable, ecological, regional building materials
- Presentation of the effects of earth building materials on indoor air quality and thus on the health and comfort of residents
- Development of planning principles for the production and use of building components made of tempered rammed earth
Data is collected by measuring pollutants both in the indoor air of buildings containing clay and the raw material itself in order to dispel existing concerns about the negative health effects of clay building materials. The focus here is on the radiation exposure (radon, thoron) of AGES clay and on possible soil pollutants. FELMI-ZFE provides support here with detailed particle analyses of indoor air- and clay- particles. The figure show the strategy of the used analysis routine after examine 10 thousands of indoor aerosols.
Due to their large storage mass, rammed earth components with integrated heating and cooling registers enable optimum use of fluctuating renewable energy. In the AEE INTEC test box, a temperature-controlled rammed earth wall is constructed and its effect on the indoor climate and energy demand is investigated. The use of clay as a recyclable material reduces both resource and energy requirements thanks to its unlimited reusability, low energy consumption during production and processing and the saving of cooling energy due to its moisture-regulating properties. The use of clay is not new, as clay is one of the oldest building materials known to mankind. The confrontation with current challenges such as the loss of biodiversity, global interdependencies and, above all, climate change offers the opportunity to reinterpret earth building and adapt it to today’s standards in order to make earth usable again for modern requirements in the construction industry.
For further information:
Dr. Mag. Manfred Nachtnebel
Key-Account-Manager – Umweltanalyse/Bausektor
Tel. +43 316 873-8831
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