A Bibliometric Analysis on Life Cycle Assessment of Bricks

Conventional production methods used in the production process of bricks as a building material causes several impacts on the environment and climate change due to greenhouse gas emissions and waste generation. The life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology is used to determine a material's carbon footprint from cradle to grave, including all production processes from the extraction of raw materials to the disposal of waste materials or re-use of recycled materials. It is important to examine the energy and material flow of the product using the LCA methodology to develop sustainable solutions in the production processes of brick material. This preliminary study aims to review existing LCA approaches about bricks, obtain bibliometric data from the published papers that include the analysis of the life cycle of bricks, and form a basis for the main study by analyzing literature data. Within the scope of this study, the bibliometric analysis method is used to examine available literature about the LCA of bricks, research gaps are investigated, and bibliometric mapping is implemented using several co-occurrences such as authorship, publication years, countries, keywords, etc. Web of Science and Scopus databases are used for bibliometric mapping. The results of the study show that it is an emerging research topic mostly studied in the context of environmental sciences, engineering, and technology that needs further research, especially in Turkey. Also, this topic is generally covered with and related to building materials, sustainability, waste management, biosolids, carbon emission, environmental impacts, recycling, and circular economy.