Cesare Oliviero Rossi

University of Calabria, Italy

Title: Rejuvenation of Aged Bitumen Extracted from filed-aged Asphalt pavement

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Biography

Abstract

During the life cycle of asphalt pavements, the bituminous binder is naturally subject to oxidation phenomenon as part of the aging process. Due to evolving environmental concerns such as carbon footprint and global warming, several incentives have been put in place to encourage recycling in the pavement industry sector. This has brought about a widespread increase in the use of Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement (RAP). The recycled binder from RAP can be extracted via a number of extraction and recovery techniques that allows its further characterization and incorporation of RAP into new bituminous mixtures. However, the aged bitumen within RAP has undergone aging and has lost most of its viscoelastic properties. In order to tackle this issue, rejuvenating additives are incorporated with RAP restoring the initial properties of its bituminous binder and making it suitable for new pavement production. In this study, bitumen extracted from a RAP source is treated with a rejuvenator and compared with the unrejuvenated sample to study the efficiency of the additive. To obtain an understanding of the physico-chemical and structural changes that occurs within the colloidal system of the bitumen, the samples were investigated using a variety of techniques. For this purpose, Dynamic Shear Rheology (DSR), Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC), light microscopy and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) were the techniques used to investigate the oxidation phenomenon in bitumen extracted from RAP and the efficiency of the rejuvenator in reversing this phenomenon.