Bitumen Challenges and Opportunities for The Road Construction Sector
As urbanization expands, so do opportunities in the infrastructure and road construction industries. The road sector faces challenges when it comes to asphalt.
bitumen for road construction
Pavement cracks should be addressed before they deteriorate into a more serious pothole problem. In addition to social benefits, roads also play an important role in a country's economic growth and development.
Roads open up regions, drive economic and social development, and play an important and significant role in the process of national development.
The estimated length of the world road network is 16.3 million km (5.5 million km in the EU, 4.5 million km in the US, and 3.2 million km in China). From time to time, each country has to deal with its road network according to its own needs, focusing on new connections and/or maintenance of existing routes.
More than 85% of surface road connections are characterized by the use of asphalt in construction because the material has many environmental and technical advantages.
Asphalt pavements are also considered a sustainable alternative to road paving materials, where asphalt is used as a binder because the material can be recycled. Refinery-produced asphalt plays an important role in road stability, which is also important for sustainability.
In addition, sustainability and performance predictability are critical for new green public procurement systems, public-private partnerships and functional tendering systems. Therefore, it is important to find out the parameters that affect road performance by predicting the properties of the materials used during construction.
According to research, asphalt has a great influence on the performance parameters of asphalt pavement due to its viscoelastic behavior.
These are mainly permanent set, hardening, low temperature cracking, fatigue cracking and sticking. However, the chemical composition of bitumen can vary widely due to the use of different crude oil sources and processing systems.
Asphalt pavement construction, such as asphalt; comprehensive; hybrid design; specialty mixtures, such as stone-based asphalt, nano-mix asphalt, and prepared pothole mixes; flexible pavement structural design; asphalt production and construction; asphalt pavement issues; asphalt pavement maintenance and repair, including recycling; and an interesting investigation of premature failure of asphalt pavements around the world.
bitumen for road repair
It contains many simple, practical and illustrative examples, as well as a large number of photos to facilitate understanding of the subject.
Studies have shown that changes in asphalt composition can affect measurable asphalt properties, including rheological structure, aging curves, and routinely measured specifications. Performance-related requirements for paving-grade asphalt (EN 12591) are still lacking in Europe.
Over the past decade or so, refiners have shifted from heavy oil products to increasing volumes of higher-value products such as diesel, gasoline and lubricants.
They are eager to meet demand for high-value products and are able to take advantage of advances in refining technology to do so. And it can also have an impact on the composition of available pavement-grade asphalt, which can affect road pavement performance.
Some reports indicate that there has been a decrease in bitumen quality over the last 30 years as well as a decrease in the surface life of asphalt roads. This might be related to changes in the supply chain in the bitumen industry and the refining systems used.
Additionally, new regulations have been introduced by the International Maritime Organization (IMO), which may also affect the asphalt industry. The IMO plan to reduce the sulfur content of marine fuels from 3.5% to 0.5% m/m will take effect on 1 January 2020.
The purpose of the legislation is to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions from shipping in the public interest. and environmental issues. To achieve this, refiners must change production facilities and make choices about crude supply.
As quality improves, the bitumen/asphalt industry is now asking serious questions. These include: What does the reduction in vacuum residue production mean for asphalt utilities? How will post-IMO price issues affect bitumen quality and quantity?
With such a serious challenge and so many complex variables, more research is needed to determine how asphalt chemistry affects road performance.
This should be done to extend the life of the asphalt pavement and reduce maintenance costs. A new technology in the asphalt industry that helps overcome these challenges is "self-healing" (SH) materials.
bitumen for road paving
SH materials inherently contain healing properties that enable them to recover from structural degradation. Binder is the key to the SH process of asphalt pavement.
Asphalt consists of a variety of materials. Since the exact composition and properties of these materials are often unknown, it is difficult to predict their performance.
TNO studies these individual materials and evaluates their properties and the entire asphalt. This means its quality is easy to determine. TNO has also developed tests to assess the quality of innovative bitumen quickly and reliably.
There are three types of self-healing processes: nanoparticles; induction heating; rejuvenation. The main idea of SH is to repair cracks that already exist in road structures. Of these approaches, induction therapy is by far the most promising. It works by adding conductive material (steel fibers) to the mix during the design process.
When cracks appear, a magnetic field is created on the pavement surface, heating and softening the asphalt, making it fluid enough to flow through the cracks. In this way, cracked areas on the asphalt surface can be effectively bridged together.
These technologies can be used to maintain, reduce costs and increase the lifespan of asphalt pavements. However, the current applications of SH-type materials are limited and the technology needs to be improved.
The Netherlands has one of the densest road networks in the world. The hard surface is about 130,000 kilometers, of which 5,000 kilometers are national roads. TNO is committed to reliably and accurately predicting the lifetime performance of roads.
When it is clear when maintenance work is required, all parties involved can make efficient investments. In this case, we focus on new solutions, improving materials such as bitumen and processes such as maintenance. Constant traffic and heavy goods vehicle use inevitably wear down your tarmac or asphalt.
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