LA INGENIERÍA COMO INTERMEDIACIÓN ENTRE LA NATURALEZA Y LA ARQUITECTURA SOSTENIBLE.

Abstract

Natural resources, either from plant or mineral origin, can be used to obtain new materials and new high benefit technical solutions. For this purpose, it’s necessary the role of the engineer designing and implementing new manufacture procedures that allow us to increase in value our natural resources. In this paper we present an example in which process engineering allows us to make the most of a renewable resource as biomass, specifically agro-forest resources and agroindustrial waste, not only by converting them into new materials, but also into highly efficient thermal and acoustic technical solutions. As binder, abundant natural mineral resources as magnesites are employed as a way to provide a non-pollutant choice to binders derived from fossil resource. Therefore, it’s about Environmental Engineering using Sustainability as a source of inspiratio and claiming new approaches in the whole life cycle of materials (waste and byproducts as inputs, new products design and highly efficient and sustainable processes, etc.) which causes different positive impacts on the environment (waste reduction in the production line, noise pollution reduction, reduction of emissions to the atmosphere,…). Keywords: Waste recovery; biomass; magnesites; new composite materials; architectural acoustics