Embodied Energy and Carbon footprints in Residential buildings

To satisfy the housing needs of an ever increasing population, the construction of buildings have become a large consumer of a considerably large amount of energy and resources. This human activity as well as other industrial and domestic activities if left unchecked will result in the gradual deterioration of our environment. The term embodied energy has been developed as a means to measure the energy expended during the life cycle of a building material. This life cycle consists of mining and processing of raw materials, production processes which transforms the raw materials to the desired building material, transportation to site, construction and finally demolition. The use of embodied energy as a measurement tool is currently being applied in other industrial sectors such as manufacturing and road construction. This paper aims at calculating the embodied energy and carbon footprint of a 1 bedroom 1 storey flat. Results obtained from this analysis reveal that the embodied energy and carbon of the case study building is 2878.32MJ⁄m^2 and 367.21〖kgCO〗^2/m^2 respectively

Application of Discrete Event Simulation in Industrial Sectors: A Case Study

Discrete Event Simulation (DES) has become a useful tool in the evaluation of changes that may bring positivity to manufacturing and process organizations for both goods and services provision. The main focus of any business entails the reduction of cost and lead time while increasing profits and this is why refining of production processes is essential. This paper reports the application of DES in two case studies. The case studies selected for the implementation of Discrete Event Simulation are a packaging company and a local mobile phone service provider using the software FlexSim. The implementation aims at showcasing the versatility and its ability to provide the relevant data to make more informed decision while optimizing the entire processes involved in production

The influence of sustainable reinforcing particulates on the density, hardness and corrosion resistance of AA 6063 matrix composites

The need for the fabrication of sustainable aluminium matrix composites (AMCs) is being sought after as practical alternatives to conventional metals and their alloys. This study was undertaken to investigate the effect of sustainable materials on the mechanical, physical and corrosion resistant properties of AA 6063. The weight fraction of the hybrid reinforcements was varied at 2.5, 5.0, 7.5 and 10.0 wt.%. For each variation, the fly ash and eggshells were weighed equally. The fabrication route selected was stir casting. The analysis of the density showed that the property decreased with increasing weight fraction of the hybrid reinforcements. Evaluation of the microhardness revealed hardness values of 78.13, 81.19, 81.54, 82.14, and 86.71 HV for the base metal, 2.5, 5.0, 7.5 and 10.0 wt.% samples respectively. The corrosion resistant properties were studied in 3.5 wt.% NaCl medium. The investigation showed that the reinforced AMCs exhibited improved corrosion resistance compared to the base metal. However, the 7.5 wt.% sample exhibited the least corrosion rate of 8.649 X 10-5 g/h