Abstract
Global warming, energy savings, and life cycle analysis issues are factors that have contributed to the rapid expansion of plant-based materials for buildings, which can be qualified as environmental-friendly, sustainable and efficient multifunctional materials. This review presents an overview on the several possibilities developed worldwide about the use of plant aggregate to design bio-based building materials. The use of crushed vegetal aggregates such as hemp (shiv), flax, coconut shells and other plants associated to mineral binder represents the most popular solution adopted in the beginning of this revolution in building materials. Vegetal aggregates are generally highly porous with a low apparent density and a complex architecture marked by a multi-scale porosity. These geometrical characteristics result in a high capacity to absorb sounds and have hygro-thermal transfer ability. This is one of the essential characteristics which differ of vegetal concrete compared to the tradition mineral-based concretes. In addition, the high flexibility of the aggregates leads to a non-fragile elasto-plastic behavior and a high deformability under stress, lack of fracturing and marked ductility with absorbance of the strains ever after having reached the maximum mechanical strength. Due to the sensitivity to moisture, the assessment of the durability of vegetal concrete constitutes one of the next scientific challenging of bio-based building materials.
Highlights
The concept of sustainable development dealt with locally is often linked to problems on a worldwide scale, such as global warming or the gradual exhaustion of resources
Bio-based building materials made with plant aggregates have a lot of potential in the market for construction materials worldwide
The unique selling point of bio-based building materials made with plant aggregate is its ability to effectively insulate a building, using a natural material
Summary
The concept of sustainable development dealt with locally is often linked to problems on a worldwide scale, such as global warming or the gradual exhaustion of resources. Concerning energy savings, most of thermal code in Europe requires that from 2020 on, all new buildings meet the positive energy criteria This improvement of energy performance of buildings induces modifications in the distribution of environmental impacts (Figure 1), and places the manufacture of the building materials as the most important phase when the energy consumption decreases from 200 to 15 kWh/m2/yr [10, 11]. To reduce these impacts, it makes sense to go on moving towards plantbased materials, whose impacts are very limited, and can even be positive on the environment
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