Friday, March 16, 2012

Environmental Value Engineering


EMERGY ANALYSIS
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Environmental Value Engineering - The Concept

The knol Eco-Economy describes some of the features of eco-economy. Eco-efficiency was explained as making existing products smarter. Making existing products do their function or provide their service, but design and fabricate them in such a way that environmental impact due to them in minimized. This immediately leads to the concept of environmental value engineering. Value engineering was a technique proposed by L.D. Miles to reduce the cost of a product while maintaining the existing functional utility. Hence it was cost value engineering. Similar idea can be applied to existing products from environmental value.
Wilfred H. Roudebush, presented the concept of Environmental Value Engineering  at the 2001 Greening of the Campus Conference at Ball State University and explained it in an American Society of Engineering Education Conference in 2003.
Accodring to Roundebush, environmental value engineering evaluates the environmental contribution and impact of built environment alternatives in units of solar EMERGY during the alternative's life cycle.
EMERGY is defined by Roundebush as all the available energy that was used in the work of making a product, including environmental impacts relating to inputs of: environment, fuel energy, goods, and services (labor). EMERGY is expressed in standard units of energy called solar emjoules (SEJ).
The methodology incorporates 10 life cycle phases of man-made products.
 
A. natural resource formation,
B. natural resource exploration and extraction,
C. material production,
D. design,
E. component production,
F. fabrication/construction,
G. use,
H. demolition,
I. natural resource recycling, and
J. disposal.
One more reference in this context is http://www.ecco.org/pdfs/EV17.pdf. http://www.enst.umd.edu/tilley/emergy/EmergyBldgMatlBuranakarnBrown.pdf is a PhD dissertation related to energy use and has some application to EVE.
Abdulaziz S. Al-Yousefi, in his paper The Synergy between Value Engineering and Sustainable Construction, http://www.ctbuh.org/Portals/0/Repository/T19_AlYousefi.555fe201-a348-4d2e-ba2c-6c335434f59b.pdf    examined the application of value engineering in the context of sustainability.
There is a good amount of foundation work done on topic. We need to find more references in online as well as prinit publications.

Comparison Between Asphalt and Concrete Pavements

In traditional life cycle cost analysis, the emphasis is costs of different pavement alternatives throughout their design lifetimes. When concrete and asphalt systems are compared, the asphalt pavement alternative was usually selected because a concrete system is more expensive to construct and maintain. The  life cycle assessment strategies are being developed that account for factors such as resource depletion, human health effects, and environmental impact in product selection. Environmental value engineering, employs a systems approach methodology to more accurately compare the input requirements and related environmental impacts of pavement alternatives.When concrete and asphalt highway pavement systems are compared using this revised life cycle analysis approach under EVE concrete proves to be superior. In fact, it was shown in an example presented  that based on a normalized unit of comparison, concrete is approximately 47.6% more efficient overall than asphalt.

EMERGY ANALYSIS

Odum, H.T., Arding, J. (1991). Emergy Analysis of Shrimp Mariculture in Ecuador.
Narragansett, RI: Coastal Resources Center, University of Rhode Island.
122 page report
Emergy Evaluation by H.T. Odium, 1998
Promise and Problems of Emergy Analysis
Jorge L. Hau and Bhavik R. Bakshi
A Presentation on comparson of Emergy and Exergy - 2008

Related Knols

Bibliography

Online
Environmental Value Engineering: An assessment methodology to compare the environmental impact of built environment alternative by Wilfred Roubebush
Environmental Value Engineering (EVE) Environmental Life Cycle Assessment of Concrete and Asphalt Highway Pavement Systems
by Wilfred H. Roudebush
Papers and Articles
Morledge, R., Smith, A, & Kashiwagi, D. T. (2006). Building Procurement. Oxford, UK: RISC Research/Blackwell Publishing.
Roudebush, W. H. (2003). Environmental value engineering: An environmental life cycle assessment methodology for comparing built environment alternatives. Proceedings of the 2003 American Society for Engineering Education Conference. Nashville, TN. June 22-25, 2003.
Roudebush, W. H. (1999). Environmental value engineering assessment of concrete and asphalt pavement.
Proceedings of the 78th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board. Washington, DC: Transportation Research Board. January 10-14, 1999.
Roudebush, W. H. (1998). Environmental Value Engineering (EVE):A green building performance assessment methodology. Conference Proceedings Green Building Challenge '98: An International Conference on the Performance Assessment of buildings. (pp. 173-178). Vancouver, BC, Canada: Natural Resources Canada. October 26-28, 1998.
Graham, P. (1997). Methods for assessing the sustainability of construction and development activity. Unpublished master's thesis, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne, Australia.
Roudebush, W. H. (1994). Using Environmental Value Engineering (EVE) to Assess the Environmental Impact of Built Environment Waste. Proceedings of the First International Conference on Sustainable Construction, International Council for Building Research (CIB) Task Group 16: Construction and Waste (pp. 317-323). Tampa, Florida. November 6-9, 1994.
Kibert, C. J., Roudebush, W. H., & Waller, L. D. (1992). Evaluating the Environmental Impacts of Construction Using the EVE Methodology. Proceedings of International Council for Building Research (CIB)'92 World Building Congress. Montreal, Canada. May 18-22, 1992.
Original Knol - http://knol.google.com/k/ environmental-value-engineering - Knol Number 1974

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