Cut peat blocks were already being used for building houses thousands of years ago. Now, scientists at the University of Tartu have developed a material which could make it possible to print energy-efficient houses out of milled peat and oil shale ash using a 3D printer. — Research in Estonia
"As peat and oil shale ash are not very expensive, house builders would be especially happy about the price of the material. According to Liiv, scientists calculated that the cost for the construction of a house shell printed from this material with a floor surface of 100–150 square meters could be about €5,000 (compared to the construction of the shell of a framed building of equivalent size, which would cost about ten times more). Thus, peat material could be used to build a very cheap house with an energy class A."
3 Comments
Oil-shale is the main fossil fuel used in Estonia and a major source of atmospheric pollution in the Baltic states.
https://link.springer.com/arti...
Instead of addressing the pollution problem they're using a byproduct of the polluting process to create marketable product. Brilliant.
Peat is not a renewable resource as it takes hundreds of years for peat to form. But apart from that why not mess around with a material used for fuel as a possible house building material.
For peat's sake, leave it in the ground!
When peat is wet and underground it is a nifty carbon storage, the moment you "harvest" it to make silly bricks out of them and expose it to the atmosphere it oxidises and releases greenhouse gasses...
We have a great deal of peat landscape in the Netherlands which is oxidising because we lower the groundwater level to use the land as farmland for cows etc. The oxidising of peat in the Netherlands actually contributes to 7 Megatons of CO2e emissions annually.
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