Cross Laminated Timber as Sustainable Construction Technology for the Future

Abstract

The purpose of this final year project was to investigate and analyse the sustainability performances of cross laminated timber (CLT) construction technology. First the availability of the raw material (timber) was studied comparing the systems of Northern Italy and Finland. Second, the manufacturing process and application of CLT in construction was compared to other traditional construction systems. A central part of the study was the environmental impact of the adhesive used in the production, with a special focus on the emissions in the production, application and disposal phases. Further studies were conducted on how to treat CLT waste material and how to improve and optimize the manufacturing process to reach a complete sustainability of the product. For the Bachelor‟s thesis, the disposal of the timber and wood adhesive in CLT were studied. With the support of the collected data, it was possible to propose four technical solutions to the problem of the disposal of waste come from the CLT. It was concluded that CLT can be advertised as a completely sustainable material for construction.