Energetic and environmental profile of a building material: A case study on Sicilian tuff

In the last years the new environmental issues have deeply changed planning practices in the building sector. Energetic efficiency is becoming one of the most relevant factors for environmental profile of buildings materials, together to raw materials and energy consumption, and waste generation. The need of environmentally oriented systems in the production of building materials has to be considered more relevant, referring to the quantitative of building sector at national level. The present study is concerned with the eco-profile of tuff, referring to a local firm. The aim of study is the analysis of energetic and environmental performance of such material and its production cycle. In the inventory mass and energy balances are carried out and quarrying of material, generation of waste and consumption of energy sources (electricity and fuel) are estimated. The boundaries of analysis are limited to the quarrying step and inventory calculation of environmental and economic inputs, that are respectively fuel and electricity, and outputs (tuff, sand and waste). For the lacking of national databases of the needed data about the above process, the representativity of the analyzed firm is evaluated in the regional context. Available data are collected, referring to quarrying process at a regional scale. That gives the possibility to carry out the sensitivity analysis in order to quantify the variation induced on tuff eco-profile, by varying original data. In such case, the authors calculate the numerical variations on the energetic and environmental balance of tuff, induced by the use of mean regional data, compared to data of the examined firm