Optimizing the use of critical materials in the built environment using Building Information Modelling (BIM

Abstract

The energy transition plays an important role in the building industry. Energy efficient buildings with smart and renewable energy technologies are developments to realize a more sustainable built environment. Photovoltaics, energy efficient lightning and smart grids are examples of these active building components which are broadly implemented to optimize energy efficiency. However, crucial resources for these technologies are critical materials. The European Union outlines critical materials (CRMs) as materials which are highly important for our current economy while the risk of disruption of supply is high. This is not only depending on the limited availability in the earth’s crust, but also on the concentration of their mining areas which causes political interventions. To become less dependent on the import of these materials, more attention must be paid on the current stocks of the EU and an optimized use of critical materials. Hence, a circular use of these materials is required to retrieve the critical materials at the end of the life-time of a product. The extreme small quantities of critical materials within many different applications make them hard to trace. Hence, data on the exact location materials and their next opportunity is required. Data about the stocks and flows of critical materials is considered as highly important to the European Commission and new possibilities need to be developed to link information to datasets of dynamic economic models. These datasets should be standardized to easily compare and combine them.
A positive development in the built environment is the increasing use of Building Information Modelling (BIM). A BIM model makes it easy to collect data of the whole lifecycle of a building and share it amongst all involved stakeholders in the process. This data can be easily exported to other formats for further use.
The aim of this research is to test if BIM is compatible to facilitate knowledge of and solutions for critical materials in the built environment. Firstly, relevant information has been determined on critical materials and circular use of building products containing critical materials, to optimize their lifetime. Subsequently, BIM is tested as an approach to process this information into standardized datasets to make it easily accessible and comparable.
As a case study, a sensor has been analyzed to show a relevant example of the current use and composition of objects containing CRMs. Literature and empirical results shows the difficulty of circular use of critical materials. The extreme small components and amounts of critical material make it difficult and labour intensive to dismantle objects containing CRMs. Thereby the recycling rate of critical materials is low. More efficient use of the materials can be achieved through technical changes in designing for a longer lifetime, new business models and more responsibility for manufacturers and users. Documentation of all required information to lengthen the lifetime of CRMs in BIM appears to be an appropriate solution through the use of IFC files. Herein standardized datasets can be created and exported into many formats for further use. On the basis of specified information in IFC’s, objects in a BIM model can be find searching for instance for ‘critical materials’, ‘Gallium’ or ‘Ga’ and schemes can be exported outlining this information. Concluding a framework is created which provides information on critical materials, material selection processes, optimized used of the materials and finally converts this data into the so called ‘Property Sets’ suitable for IFC. A further challenge is the transparency of the supply chain to receive all the required information. To document all elements, full collaboration and transparency from the beginning of the supply chain is required.