You are here:
EVALUATION OF THE CARBON FOOTPRINT OF AN INNOVATIVE SEWER REHABILITATION METHOD - abstract
Citation:
Selvakumar, A. AND J. Matthews. EVALUATION OF THE CARBON FOOTPRINT OF AN INNOVATIVE SEWER REHABILITATION METHOD - abstract. Presented at ISTT No-Dig 2014, Madrid, SPAIN, October 13 - 15, 2014.
Impact/Purpose:
As trenchless technologies have continued to develop and improve over the past 40 years, the average rate of system renewal is still not adequate to keep up with the increasing needs of utilities. To meet that need, many wastewater utilities are seeking innovative trenchless technologies to repair larger portions of their systems. However, information on emerging technologies is not always easy to obtain. The need for independently verified information on emerging technologies has been a focus of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency through its Aging Water Infrastructure since 2007. The U.S. EPA created an innovative technology demonstration program to demonstrate and evaluate the performance of emerging technologies under actual field conditions.
Description:
A benefit of trenchless methods touted by many practitioners when compared to open cut construction is lower carbon dioxide emissions. In an attempt to verify these claims, tools have been developed that calculate the environmental impact of traditional open cut methods and commonly used trenchless methods. As part of a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s Research Program, one key area of research is a field demonstration program of innovative rehabilitation technologies. The purpose of the program is to: (1) gather reliable performance and cost data during the application of these technologies; and (2) make the capabilities of these technologies better known to the industry. As part of the technology performance evaluation, the carbon footprint of an innovative sewer rehabilitation technology was calculated using the e-Calc tool that was developed by Arizona State University. The inputs for the calculations came from field demonstration logs that tracked the durations and equipment for each major activity. The paper describes the carbon footprint evaluation of an innovative, spray-applied, fiber-reinforced geopolymer mortar for rehabilitating a severely deteriorated 60-in. concrete pipe. The trenchless method was found to have significant reduction in carbon footprint.
