All walls that are not a part of the supporting structure in a building are called non-load bearing walls. It may be the inside of an external wall or a room separating wall. They are usually built as a stud wall with drywall and insulation if necessary. The dominant stud material is steel but it is also common with wood. The drywall is fastened with screws and that can be a time consuming method. Working at construction sites can be demanding for the body with a lot of heavy lifting and non-ergonomic postures. Steel is a finite resource and generates high emissions of substances which has an environmental impact for production because the mostly used energy resource is fossil fuels. The process of mining iron ore and converting the ore to steel is extremely energy intensive. It would be better with a more environmentally friendly alternative and that is what WTC Teknik together with Paper Province and BillerudKorsnäs Gruvön has developed. The product is called Woodpipe and it is made of fluting with a double-sided tape used for fastening the drywall instead of screws. An LCA has been done to find out how much less environmental impact Woodpipe generates compared to a steel stud. Data has been collected from BillerudKorsnäs, Europrofil, and through a literature review. The results show that Woodpipe has a lower impact for the environment in all phases of the life cycle regarding emissions of substances that affects global warming, acidification and eutrophication. Woodpipe is lighter and uses a faster method of assembling than regular steel studs. This makes Woodpipe easier to handle at construction sites and makes the product attractive to the market. The efficiency improvement for Woodpipe is in the raw material phase where the majority of the emissions now come from.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:kau-43576 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Wahlström, Thea |
| Publisher | Karlstads universitet, Institutionen för ingenjörs- och kemivetenskaper |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf, application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess, info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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