The recycling potential (RP) indicates the ability of building materials to form a closed-loop material flow, that is, the material efficiency during its whole life cycle. Mass timber constructions and concrete buildings vary widely in RP, but the differences are difficult to calculate. This paper proposed a level-based scheme to compare the RP of mass timber and concrete buildings, and a BIM-Eco2soft-MS Excel workflow coupling Material Cycle Database and digital design tools were established to obtain information on building materials, resource consumption, and environmental impact for the RP calculation. Taking a residential building as an example, the difference in RP between mass timber and concrete at the material-level is firstly discussed. Then at the component-level, the RP of the wood structure component and concrete component is compared, and the optimization methods are proposed. Finally, the difference in RP between the mass timber building and reinforced concrete building at the building-level are illustrated. The results show that the RP of mass timber building is higher, and the disassembly ability is better. Within a 100-year service life, the RP of mass timber buildings is 73% and that of the reinforced concrete building is 34%. The total amount of material consumption and waste of the Variant CLT is 837,030 kg and 267,237 kg respectively, which is less than one-third of that of concrete buildings (3,458,488 kg; 958,145 kg). The Global Warming potential (GWP) of these two variants is −174.0 kgCO2/m2 and 221.0 kgCO2/m2 separately, indicating that the Variant CLT can realize negative carbon emissions and gain ecological benefits. A sensitivity analysis is conducted to explore the potential impacts of certain parameters on GWP and RP of buildings. The research can provide the reference for material selection, component design, and RP optimization of mass timber buildings. In addition, new ideas for assessing the potential of circularity as a design tool are proposed to support the transition towards a circular construction industry and to realize carbon neutrality.
15 July 2025 in Resources, Conservation and Recycling
With the development of internet, online reviews are user-generated content posted in the web-media era and can extract meaning from the comments through data-mining technology. The study uses python crawler to collect reviews and conduct post-occupancy evaluation on Oze National Park (ONP), a natural conservation in Japan. Content and semantic network analysis were adopted to study the high-frequency words and their relationships. Latent Dirichlet Allocation was utilized to uncover the dimensions of the comments. The conclusions were as follows: 1) Japanese tourists focused on landscape plants and nature, while the Chinese focused on facilities and experience, English concentrated on hiking activity. 2) The Ozegahara Plateau route and the Lake Ozenuma route were the two main courses in ONP. 3) 48% of the concept of the landscape of ONP was conveyed to the users. 4) Male tourists focused on location information and landscape, while females were concerned about the process and experience. The single-visitors paid attention to the road and boardwalk. Family tourism concentrated on experience and time while friends and couple-visitors preferred to perceive action. 5) The Lysichiton Americanus had become a basic feature of ONP, and visitors were satisfied with the landscape and experience.