Effect of Carbon Pricing on Optimal Mix Design of Sustainable High-Strength Concrete

Xiao-Yong Wang
Additional contact information
Xiao-Yong Wang: Department of architectural engineering, Kangwon National University, Chuncheon-Si 24341, Korea

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 20, 1-17

Abstract: Material cost and CO 2 emissions are among the vital issues related to the sustainability of high-strength concrete. This research proposes a calculation procedure for the mix design of silica fume-blended high-strength concrete with an optimal total cost considering various carbon pricings. First, the material cost and CO 2 emission cost are determined using concrete mixture and unit prices. Gene expression programming (GEP) is used to evaluate concrete mechanical and workability properties. Second, a genetic algorithm (GA) is used to search the optimal mixture, considering various constraints, such as design compressive strength constraint, design workability constraint, range constraints, ratio constraints, and concrete volume constraint. The optimization objective of the GA is the sum of the material cost and the cost of CO 2 emissions. Third, illustrative examples are shown for designing various kinds of concrete. Five strength levels (from 95 to 115 MPa with steps of 5 MPa) and four carbon pricings (normal carbon pricing, zero carbon pricing, five-fold carbon pricings, and ten-fold carbon pricings) are considered. A total of 20 optimal mixtures are calculated. The optimal mixtures were found the same for the cases of normal CO 2 pricing and zero CO 2 pricing. Optimal mixtures with higher strengths are more sensitive to variation in carbon pricing. For five-fold CO 2 pricing, the cement content of mixtures with higher strengths (105, 110, and 115 MPa) are lower than those of normal CO 2 pricing. As the CO 2 pricing increases from five-fold to ten-fold, for mixtures with a strength of 110 MPa, the cement content becomes lower. Summarily, the proposed method can be applied to the material design of sustainable high-strength concrete with low material cost and CO 2 emissions.

Keywords: cost; CO 2 emission; gene expression programming; genetic algorithm; carbon pricing; sustainable high-strength concrete (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/20/5827/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/20/5827/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:20:p:5827-:d:278582

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().