The Highway Engineering Research Group (GIIC) of the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV) has designed, together with the company Becsa, a new, more sustainable pavement for bike lanes.
BeGreenAsphalt --this is its trade name-- incorporates recycled materials from construction and demolition waste (ceramic material and Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement (RAP)) as substitutes for aggregates and conventional binders used in the manufacture of bituminous mixes for bike lanes.
"With this pavement, we completely eliminate natural aggregates, which we have replaced in equal parts with 50% ceramic waste aggregates and 50% RAP. In this way, we have a bituminous mixture made up of 100% recycled material; thus reducing the impact of taking the ceramic waste or the RAP to landfill and it is not necessary to extract natural aggregate from the quarry," said David Llopis Castelló, a researcher at the UPV's Road Engineering Research Group (GIIC), in a statement.
In addition, since the RAP already contains a part of bitumen, the amount of binder that must be added to the mix is reduced. "The mix is manufactured with a total bitumen content of 5%, but it is only necessary to provide approximately two thirds of this material because one third already comes from the recovered asphalt pavement," comments Pablo Álvarez Troncoso, Head of Laboratory and I D i Asfaltos de Becsa.
The new BeGreenAsphalt is the result of the ReCyclingLane Project funded by the Valencian Innovation Agency, whose main objective was to design more sustainable bituminous pavements for bike lanes. "The reduction of the environmental impact, in kilograms of equivalent carbon dioxide (Kg CO2 eq) per ton of BeGreenAsphlat, is around 40% due to the reduction of the impacts of raw materials," says Aida Marzá Beltrán, Standardization technician , Quality Control and I D i de Becsa.
Until reaching the final product, the UPV and Becsa team analyzed a total of six mixtures with different percentages of recycled or reused materials to replace natural aggregates, between 50% and 100%. In addition, it has also analyzed a conventional bituminous mixture made up of 100% natural aggregates as a reference mixture to be able to compare the results of one and the other.
"The work was divided into two phases. In the first, we worked on the design and characterization of the bituminous mixtures so that they complied with all the guidelines set by the highway regulations: apparent and maximum density, content of holes in the mixture and in aggregates. , stability and deformation. And in the second phase we identified the bituminous mixtures that could be used in bike lanes. It was the C50R50 mixture --half ceramic aggregates, half RAP-- that gave the best results", points out David Llopis.
And with regard to the safety and comfort of this new pavement, the mix has the same benefits as a bituminous mix made up of natural aggregates. As far as road safety is concerned, "the new BeGreenAsphalt mix provides adequate values of macrotexture and coefficient of slip resistance," says Carlos Alonso Troyano, laboratory technician and researcher at the GIIC-UPV.
This new pavement has already been used for the construction of an experimental section of bike lane in the town of Burriana and several actions are planned this year in other towns in the province of Castellón.
In addition, the first results of the research carried out by the GIIC-UPV and Becsa were published in the Sustainability magazine.
