Waste Recovery and Thermal Analysis of Refurbished Buildings’ Walls: The Sustainable Big Bag

The construction sector has a high environmental impact, especially due to C&D waste. At the same time, the increase in the temperature of the Earth’s surface due to pollution requires interventions on the built environment, aimed at improving the performance of the envelope in hot climates. In the literature, there are studies on components to increase thermal efficiency, but they are limited by long or expensive production processes or high environmental impact. This research considers Italy as a reference area. The aim of this research is to design, prototype, and verify a sustainable component to be included in the stratigraphy of light mass vertical closures to increase their heat capacity that allows for the reuse of C&D waste and the optimization of site operations both in the selective demolition phase and in the redevelopment phase of the building. The method follows the following phases: analysis of the type of waste from C&D, analysis of international best practices, analysis of the possibilities of intervention on vertical closures according to the pre-existing structure and choice of cases of greatest scientific interest, design of the sustainable big bag by reusing inert materials from selective demolition and recycled polypropylene fabrics, prototyping and verification by laboratory tests, and software analysis to verify the thermal advantage. The use of the sustainable big bag allows for construction advantages, facilitating site operations both in the construction and waste disposal phases, energy advantages by improving the heat capacity of the envelope, and increases in the sustainability of the intervention through the reuse of waste materials.

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