Assessing the thermal performance of upcycled shipping container as a sustainable building material in a Warm humid climate

Abstract

The current trends in the construction sector are responsible for majority of the CO2 emissions in India. The sustainable methods to reduce the CO2 emissions should include not just recycling but also upcycling the materials, for instance – shipping containers. Despite the industry’s best efforts to minimize waste generation, millions of shipping containers end up as scrap materials, every year. This phenomenon can be changed effectively by reusing the scrap materials as alternate building materials. The trend of reusing the shipping containers as building materials is at its peak in Western countries, while in India, it is still in a nascent stage. The aim of the current research paper is to evaluate and assess the thermal performance of upcycled shipping containers as a building material in warm humid climatic condition. This research includes a review of literature about the strengths and weaknesses of the shipping containers as a building material; it also compares and evaluates the thermal performance of uninsulated container buildings with base case conventional building and the insulated container building through Opaque simulation method. The results were obtained by comparing and assessing the thermal performance and cost of various insulating materials for a container building. The study outcomes greatly help the architects to reuse the shipping containers as a sustainable alternative building material in warm humid regions.