Sharif Digital Repository

Developments in the field of green cement-based products are characterized as an important approach to sustainable development and are being devoted much attention by the construction industry. Numerous types of materials are utilized; however, based on other published studies, the use of waste material as a filler normally deteriorates the performance of cementitious products. Appropriate additives thus need to be employed to improve the performances and properties of green products. As a consequence, the aim of this study has been to investigate the properties of a novel green cement-based composite-a hybrid system composed of cement, waste natural fiber, silica nano-particles, and... 

Review of waste management models indicate that optimization models based on the chain of waste flow are developed and applied in waste management systems. These models do represent the flow of material through few stages and they lack an integrated approach that may include the flow of material from the point of waste generation in different sectors till the end point at the land fill. It is also argued that the existing models do rarely consider the interrelated issues of economics, environment and social aspects. This conclusion has been followed by the development of an integrated multi stage and multi period dynamic model of waste flow based on quasi dynamic optimization techniques. The... 

Construction industry is one of the most important fractions of economy in developing countries. This industry consumes enormous amounts of raw materials and produces considerable waste. The optimization of construction material usage not only saves costs but also can significantly contribute towards Sustainable Development. This article addresses Construction Waste Management as an approach to improve construction productivity, with a focus on its application in developing countries. The status of construction waste production and management in Tehran metropolitan, Iran-as a developing country-is investigated and compared with the status of developed countries. Subsequently, barriers to... 

The objective of the present study is to depict an inclusive Construction Waste Management (CWM) plan looking at the total project life cycle. This holistic approach is called Integrated Construction Waste Management (ICWM). This research program has been conducted through several consecutive academic dissertations at Civil Engineering Department of SUT and was firstly aimed to identify waste sources throughout project life cycle. Concurrent research efforts were focused on project delivery methods evaluation, e.g. contract type effect on waste generation amount along with appropriate guidelines/incentives development that could promote ICMW. These studies were conducted via field... 

Construction and demolition (C&D) waste dreadful impacts increasingly cause public concerns. Aiming to boost resource exploitation efficiency, circular economy is contemplated a pertinent C&D waste management practice. However, transitioning to circular economy in C&D waste management is hindered by barriers which are to be found and overcome to adeptly handle this kind of waste. In this paper 22 potential crisp barriers are identified through reviewing the seminal literature which could be categorized under three dimensions of behavioral, technical, and legal. Six experts in behavioral, technical, and legal sciences working in sustainable C&D projects were asked to rate the dimensions and... 

In this paper we develop a stochastic programming approach to solve a multi-period multi-product multi-site aggregate production planning problem in a green supply chain for a medium-term planning horizon under the assumption of demand uncertainty. The proposed model has the following features: (i) the majority of supply chain cost parameters are considered; (ii) quantity discounts to encourage the producer to order more from the suppliers in one period, instead of splitting the order into periodical small quantities, are considered; (iii) the interrelationship between lead time and transportation cost is considered, as well as that between lead time and greenhouse gas emission level; (iv)... 

In connection to present energy demand and waste management crisis in Pakistan, refuse-derived fuel (RDF) is gaining importance as a potential co-fuel for existing coal fired power plants. This research focuses on the co-combustion of low-quality local coal with RDF as a mean to reduce environmental issues in terms of waste management strategy. The combustion characteristics and kinetics of coal, RDF, and their blends were experimentally investigated in a micro-thermal gravi-metric analyzer at four heating rates of 10, 20, 30, and 40 °C/min to ramp the temperature from 25 to 1000 °C. The mass percentages of RDF in the coal blends were 10%, 20%, 30%, and 40%, respec-tively. The results show... 

The vast nationwide COVID-19 vaccination programs are implemented in many countries worldwide. Mass vaccination is causing a rapid increase in infectious and non-infectious vaccine wastes, potentially posing a severe threat if there is no well-organized management plan. This paper develops a mixed-integer mathematical programming model to design a COVID-19 vaccine waste reverse supply chain (CVWRSC) for the first time. The presented problem is based on minimizing the system's total cost and carbon emission. The uncertainty in the tendency rate of vaccination is considered, and a robust optimization approach is used to deal with it, where an interactive fuzzy approach converts the model into...