The house of the future is green and circular. In the near future, you will be able to build a house with bricks baked with hydrogen. You will then be able to stack these bricks without the need for cement as well. And let’s not forget the interior decor either, which will soon be made of environmentally friendly plastics.
The construction of housing calls for bricks, and the fabrication of them also consumes a lot of gas. An average brick factory uses about six million m3 of natural gas per year. The construction industry has been working for decades to reduce harmful emissions. Brick factory Rodruza, energy company Essent and hydrogen specialist HyMove are now joining forces to make the brick industry more sustainable through the use of hydrogen.
Short-term solution
HyMove is handling the application side of the collaborative project. Based in the Dutch city of Arnhem, the company supplies hydrogen-based fuel cell systems to several companies in Europe. According to Tina Pan, operations manager of HyMove, the collaboration with Essent and Rodruza came about after a project through which the company promoted the fuel systems.
“We were able to master the technique of converting hydrogen into electricity in a reliable and safe way. Just not the logistics of having a hydrogen supply yet. We had been in contact with a supplier about that for a while already. They supply hydrogen by using Liquid organic hydrogen carriers (LOHC), an organic oil. Hydrogen can be safely stored and transported in that,” Pan says. ” You can extract the hydrogen at any location. The oil can then be returned to be used again. We thought this presented a great opportunity.”
According to Pan, transporting hydrogen to industrial areas through existing pipelines is the best option. “At present, natural gas goes through these pipelines, but it will take another 30 years before all the pipelines are adapted for hydrogen.”
Technically speaking, it is still the best option, but by no means the most easy one to bring about. So a flexible contingency plan is necessary. “LOHC is consequently a suitable interim solution for sectors that need to become sustainable as soon as possible, such as the brick industry.”
Lego bricks
Sustainable bricks are one thing, but actually building in a sustainable way calls for a whole new solution. That’s how Dennis Deen found that his masonry and scaffolding construction business, which he had run for eight years throughout the construction crisis, was no longer sustainable. At its peak, the company handled all the structural work for contractors and employed about 100 people.
After the crisis, Deen started talking to a business coach. He had been running into several problems, but could not see a solution. ‘Lock yourself up and make a business plan,’ the coach advised him. At first Deen was reluctant, because “I used to do that when I was at school,” but eventually he gave in and did just that. He let go of everything he knew about bricklaying and construction and started brainstorming.
Apprentices
“All my problems related to cement. You can’t carry out bricklaying in cold weather, but I also had to continue paying my staff during periods of bad weather. New staff is also almost impossible to find. We have only 6,500 masons in the Netherlands, compared to 26,000 back in 1990. Masonry training also takes three years. And I’ve only trained two apprentices in eight years.”
“So I then thought to myself: ‘If I had a magic wand, what would I want?’ I let go of all the knowledge I had and started thinking from the following premise: every manufacturer takes part, it involves a training course of at most a week and it has got to be very straightforward for the architect to work with in modern-day construction.” Soon after that, Deen sold his own company. After many sleepless nights, countless safety tests and the investment of a few million euros of his own capital, the stacking system Drystack was born.
With the use of Drystack bricks, it is possible to build without cement. Very precise holes are drilled into the bricks so that they can be attached to a connector (the Layer). This allows whole rows of bricks to be stacked on top of each other like Lego bricks. Not only is building that much faster, it is also more sustainable.
“The technique we use does not exist anywhere else in the world. Architects can work with it very easily. All the things you can make with masonry are also possible with Drystack.” Besides eliminating the need for cement, the bricks can also be easily reused. “If you glue or mortar bricks, you can be certain that eventually after about 50 years, they will disappear under the asphalt. But with Drystack, you can simply reuse bricks, which have a life cycle of a thousand years. So, everything falls into place. It fits perfectly into the circular scheme of things.”
New professional field
Deen has not only come up with an innovative technique. He has also developed a whole new professional field: the stacker with the associated training. This has also given him a solution to the growing shortage of bricklayers in one fell swoop. “We now have three training courses that each last a week. You have a basic stacker, an assistant stacker and a team leader. I want Drystack to eventually become the standard for processing bricks worldwide. I had never dared voice that goal, but we now have a great team, major investors from the construction industry behind us, and six brick manufacturers already waiting for our machines. We can really move things up a notch now!”
For every interior
Anyone who would like to build a sustainable house must, of course, pay attention to their interior design as well. That’s where researchers at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm have come up with a solution. They have developed a bio-plastic that is based on wood. The researchers hope that this new material can replace the existing, environmentally harmful plastic used in interiors and construction materials. The most remarkable thing about this material is that it is very hard. This is due to the high content of fibers it contains. Something that is unique, because no one had managed to develop such a strong bio-plastic until now. In addition, the natural plastic is also easily biodegradable.
Circularity
“Degradability creates circularity,” says Peter Olsén, one of the researchers. “At the end of its life cycle, we can dissolve the plastic with water, which gives us all the raw materials back to make plastic all over again.”
Yet the biodegradable property of the plastic also has a flip side. “We can’t make outdoor panels out of biodegradable plastic because they aren’t able to withstand long-term exposure to weather. However, it is suitable for furniture. It’s also very easy to collect and reuse them in a circular way.”
Endless
So the new bio-plastic still needs to be optimized before it can be used on a large scale. “Once we can adjust the degradability of the plastic, that will open the doors for outdoor applications. For example, by developing the plastic so that it only degrades with a chemical solution and not in the environment.”
Olsén has every confidence in this: “We are now at the point where we have to start thinking about how we design our materials. How many cycles should the material last? Should we design it for long-term and sustainable usage or short and circular instead? The possibilities are endless.”
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