Abstract
Understanding the economic feasibility of cross-laminated timber (CLT), an emerging and sustainable alternative to concrete and steel, is critical for the rapid expansion of the mass timber industry. However, previous studies on economic performance of CLT have not fully considered the variations in the feedstock, plant capacities, manufacturing parameters, and capital and operating costs. This study fills this gap by developing a techno-economic analysis of producing CLT panels in the Southern United States. The effects of those variations on minimum selling price (MSP) of CLT panels are explored by Monte Carlo simulation. The results show that, across all the plant capacities from 30,000 to 150,000 m3/year, the MSP ranges from $345 to $609/m3 with a ±6%–9% range caused by the variations in feedstocks, key manufacturing parameters, capital and operating cost. The MSP decreases significantly along the increasing capacities. A sensitivity analysis exhibits that the lumber price, lumber preparing loss, plant capacity, and the installed costs of layering and gluing, finishing, and miscellaneous, are the top driving factors to CLT MSP. Supported by Geographic Information System, this study also studies the transportation cost of delivering CLT to customers under three CLT demanding levels (1%, 5%, 15%). The results show that the transportation cost is 1%–8% of the MSP. Lower demanding level or higher plant capacity can increase the transportation cost due to average longer delivering distance. When considering the delivered cost that sums MSP and transportation cost, larger plant capacity does not necessarily generate lower delivered cost.
Highlights
The reinforced concrete and steel dominate the structural systems of mid-rise buildings in North America [1,2]
Though the result range is smaller than the uncertainty range of equipment cost (±30%), the uncertainty in capital investment needs to be considered in implementing the cross-laminated timber (CLT) plant
This study explores the economic performance of producing CLT from softwood lumber in the Southern U.S and considers the effects of variations in plant capacities, key manufacturing parameters, material and energy cost on minimum selling price (MSP) of CLT panels
Summary
The reinforced concrete and steel dominate the structural systems of mid-rise buildings (e.g., commercial buildings) in North America [1,2]. Cross-laminated timber (CLT) has attracted increasing attention for mid-rise buildings as an environmentally sustainable alternative to reinforced concrete and steel [3,4,5,6]. CLT is a prefabricated mass timber product with odd lumber (sawn lumber or structural composite lumber) layers (typically 3, 5, or 7) stacked crosswise (typically 90°) to form a solid panel [1,7,8,9,10]. The typical dimension of CLT panels can reach 0.30–3.05 meters in width, 0.10– 0.25 meters in thickness, and up to 18 meters [11,12]. Over traditional reinforced concrete and steel, CLT has shown advantages in fire resistance and thermal performance [13,14,15,16,17], acoustic performance
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