An innovative forced convection method for drying geosourced and biosourced construction materials at wall scale

Abstract

As global temperatures continue to rise, climate change impacts are now being observed in all aspects of life, driving the need to transition to a low-carbon economy. In the building sector and as a construction material, Earth-Hemp composites present a sustainable solution due to their low embodied energy and low environmental impact. However, at the construction site, and as with any other material, the drying process of Earth-Hemp can be very slow, which can lead to costly delays for building work and even serious problems in term of mold growth affecting their durability. The objective of this work is to develop an innovative drying method to reduce drying time of construction materials and speed up the completion of a project. In this paper, a comparative study of natural convection drying with innovative forced convection drying is carried out on sprayed Earth-Hemp-Lime "ELH" prototypes. The results show that the innovative forced convection method is very effective for drying ELH materials at an accelerated rate, where the drying period has been reduced by a factor of 2, compared to the drying time required when using the natural convection method.