Journal of Cleaner Production: Towards 90% Warm Re-Use of Porous Asphalt Using Foaming Technology
Journal of Cleaner Production: Towards 90% Warm Re-Use of Porous Asphalt Using Foaming Technology
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history: The growing needs for sustainability demand that porous asphalt (PA), one of the most critical types of
Received 15 October 2017 asphalt mixtures, can be produced with high quality, low production temperature and using high per-
Received in revised form centages of reclaimed materials. With the support of the European Lifeþ program, a new decomposition
29 March 2018
technique was developed to decompose the reclaimed PA into the mortar sand (grain size 2 mm,
Accepted 10 April 2018
bitumen content 10e14%) and the reclaimed stones in various fractions (bitumen content less than 1%).
Available online 10 April 2018
The reclaimed mortar sand can then be rejuvenated, enriched and homogenized to obtain a high quality
mortar. When this mortar is mixed with the reclaimed stones, a high quality PA can be obtained with
Keywords:
Porous asphalt
almost 95% reclaimed materials. This paper discusses the influence of different production techniques on
LE2AP the performances of this mixture. These techniques include (A) conventional hot production technique at
Lifeþ 170 C, (B) the cold feed of reclaimed mortar sand in combination with bitumen foaming obtaining a mix
Foaming at 105 C and (C) the hot production of mortar in combination with the newly developed mortar foaming
Recycling method to obtain a mixture at 105 C. Laboratory results indicate that the PA may be produced at 105 C,
Sustainability containing up to 93% reclaimed materials and having a high quality.
© 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.04.086
0959-6526/© 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
252 J. Qiu et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 190 (2018) 251e260
Fig. 2. Illustration of reclaimed mortar sand (upper) and reclaimed aggregates (lower).
2.1. Materials
Reclaimed PA
Decomposition
LE2AP mortar
Mortar production
Mortar foaming
LE2AP mixture
(80% reclaimed materials,
produced at 110-110°C)
Table 1
Descriptions of materials obtained after decompositions of reclaimed porous asphalt.
Reclaimed mortar sand [%] 100 100 100 100 97.4 24.0 10.5
PA-stone 5/8 mm [%] 100 100 81.5 9.4 4.2 2.6 1.1
PA-stone 8/16 mm [%] 100 99.5 10.2 3.0 2.6 1.2 1.0
Reclaimed PA [%] 100 99 52.9 35.7 23.2 8.0 4.2
Crushed stone 11/16 mm [%] 100 88.5 3.5 2.4 1.1 0.4
rotary decomposition process. The mechanisms of the rotary technologies were used in the lab scale, namely the bitumen
decomposition process can be found elsewhere in the literature foaming method and the mortar foaming method.
(Huurman et al., 2016). The products obtained after the process are The principle of the using foamed bitumen was developed in the
discussed hereafter and used as raw materials in this research. The 1950s. When hot bitumen and water meet each other, a bitumen
bitumen-rich mortar contains about 10.5% bitumen by weight and foam can be created with a very large expansion in volume at a
the reclaimed aggregates (hereafter, PA-stone) contain about 1% temperature around 100e110 C. This principle allows the binders
bitumen by weight. When comparing the obtained PA-stone with to coat the warm mineral aggregates effectively and to produce a
the reclaimed PA and the normally used crushed stone shown in half-warm/warm asphalt mixture. The authors of this paper have
Table 1, the gradation of the produced PA-stone is clearly close to a developed the LEAB (Dutch acronym for Low Energy Asphalt Con-
stone fraction rather than a reclaimed PA. As such, the variation in crete) technology based on this principle. The LEAB foaming tech-
gradation, especially for fine particles can be well controlled. nology can be used to produce high quality asphalt mixtures at
Table 2 gives the recipe of the LE2AP mortar and its fresh 90e110 C, which have the same composition and performance
equivalent. The mortar contains sand, filler and bitumen, which is characteristics as their hot mix equivalents produced around
the binding agent of the porous asphalt. The LE2AP mortar is 150e170 C. The LEAB technology has been successfully applied in
designed such that the bitumen content and the bitumen pene- practices for more than 10 years with more than 500,000 ton LEAB
tration are similar to that of the fresh mortar. The designed LE2AP asphalt mixtures produced and applied in about 200 Dutch road
mortar contains 82.9% reclaimed mortar sand, new bitumen and construction projects including motorways, provincial roads and
rejuvenator. The rate of application is controlled by the log-pen streets (Jacobs et al., 2010).
blending law of bitumen. The expected penetration of the The bitumen foaming unit includes the control unit, kettle unit,
blended bitumen in the LE2AP mortar is 89 (0.1 mm), which is pumping unit and the foaming unit. The hot bitumen are first filled
identical to that of the fresh bitumen in the fresh PA mortar. in the kettle unit with electrical heating, together with the
Table 3 presents the compositions of the designed mixtures. It pumping unit creates the hot bitumen a constant circulation.
has to be noted that, part of remaining bitumen on the PA-stone is During foaming, the foaming unit is activated to generate both hot
also taken into account during the mix design as bitumen content. bitumen and high-pressure water into a small chamber and to be
It is assumed arbitrarily that 25% of the bitumen in or on the PA- dosed into the mixer.
stone is acting as black rock and cannot be reactivated. The other
75% of the bitumen on/in the PA-stone is active in the new mixture. 2.2.2. Mortar foaming method
This bitumen may either be reactivated or has penetrated the stone The mortar foaming technology was specially developed under
as pre-coating which binds the stone and the LE2AP mortar into the the European Lifeþ project LE2AP. In this technology, the reclaimed
stone. The percentage of activation is arbitrarily selected. Further mortar is rejuvenated and enriched by rejuvenators together with
research is ongoing to refine it further. soft bitumen to obtain a binding mortar for the new porous asphalt
at a temperature of 170 C with a bitumen content of around
2.2. Methods 25e30% by mass. Afterwards this mortar, the LE2AP mortar, can be
produced and foamed with a special designed unit as shown in
2.2.1. Bitumen foaming method Fig. 3.
As shown in Fig. 3, in order to be able to produce the designed The structure of the mortar foaming unit is similar to that of the
LE2AP PA mixture at a relative lower production temperature, for bitumen foaming unit, including the control unit, kettle unit,
example around 105 C, two types of developed foaming pumping unit and the foaming unit. This unit is designed by
Table 2
Descriptions of mortar compositions.
Reclaimed mortar Crushed Filler [%] 70/100 pen Rejuvenator [%] Total bitumen Percentage reclaimed Expected
sand [%] sand [%] bitumen [%] content [%] materials [%] penetration
[0.1 mm]
Table 3
Descriptions of mixture compositions.
PA-stone 8/16 [%] PA-stone 5/8 [%] Virgin stone 5/8 [%] LE2AP Mortar [%] Bitumen content [%] Percentage recycling [%]
Foaming unit
Control unit
Kettle unit
Pumping unit
Foaming unit
Kettle unit
Pumping unit
Control unit
Fig. 3. Bitumen foaming apparatus (upper) and mortar foaming apparatus (lower).
considering both the bitumen foaming principle and the influence (C) Bitumen foaming: The mortar sand was pre-blended with
of the sand and filler particles in the mortar. The hot mortar is first the rejuvenator. Then the mortar sand was mixed with the
produced in the kettle unit per receipt, together with the pumping pre-heated PA-stone. At the same time, the required new
unit creates a constant circulation for homogeneity. During foam- bitumen was added by the bitumen foaming unit.
ing, the foaming unit is activated to generate both hot mortar and
high-pressure water into a dosing arm and to be dosed into the By the use of mortar foaming technology, the expected mixture
mixer. temperature is almost the same as the preheating temperature of
the PA-stone. By the use of the bitumen foaming and cold dosing
technology, the preheating temperature of the PA-stone has to be
increased by 20 C to be able to produce at the same mixture
2.2.3. Test plan temperature of the mortar foaming technology.
As it is shown in Table 4, three main production methods of the Investigations were carried out through mortar performance,
LE2AP PA mixtures were investigated in this research. bitumen/mortar foaming performance and mixture performance.
The mortar performance was investigated using the Dynamic Shear
(A) Hot production: LE2AP mortar was first produced by mixing Rheometer (DSR) as shown in Fig. 4. The tests were conducted with
mortar sand, soft bitumen and rejuvenator together. Then a special mortar column setup with a height of 20 mm and a
the LE2AP mortar was mixed with the hot PA-stone without diameter of 6 mm (Huurman et al., 2010). The foaming performance
foaming action. was evaluated with both expansion and half-life parameters. The
(B) Mortar foaming: LE2AP mortar was first produced by mix- mixture performance was investigated using the indirect tension
ing mortar sand, soft bitumen and rejuvenator together. test according to NEN-EN 13108-20. Both the dry and the wet
Then the LE2AP mortar was foamed with the mortar foaming groups (specimens were retained around 72 h at 40 C) were
unit and mixed with the pre-heated PA-stone.
Table 4
Descriptions of production methods.
subjected to an indirect tension loading with a loading speed of content and without special gradation correction.
50 mm/min at a temperature of 15 C.
Table 5
Mortar compositions with and without correction.
Fresh PA LE2AP mortar full grading LE2AP mortar filler grading LE2AP mortar no grading
mortar correction correction correction
1,E+10
1,E+09
1,E+08
1,E+07
G* [Pa]
1,E+06
Fresh PA 0/16 mortar
1,E+05 LE2AP mortar no correction
LE2AP mortar filler correction
1,E+04
LE2AP mortar filler/sand correction
1,E+03
1,E-05 1,E-03 1,E-01 1,E+01 1,E+03 1,E+05 1,E+0 7
Reduced frequency @20°C [ rad /s ]
90
60
Phase angle [° ]
Max. expansion ratio obtained mortar foaming may reach a value of 10 and the half-life is
above 200s. The half-time of mortar foam thus is even longer than
the half-life of the bitumen foam. This might be due to the presence
Foaming index = of the sand and filler in the mortar foam (Qiu et al., 2016). Based on
area expansion vs. half-life
Expansion [-]
the results from the expansion and half-life, the foam index is
calculated. A higher foam index indicates a better workability of the
foaming product. The result shows that at a water content of 1.5%,
the foam index of the mortar foaming approaches the maximum,
whereas the optimal water content for the bitumen foaming is
around 2.5%.
30
10
0
0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5 3,0 3,5
600
LEAB bitumen foaming
LE2AP mortar foaming
500
400
Half-lief [s]
300
200
100
0
0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5 3,0 3,5
2500
LEAB bitumen foaming
LE2AP mortar foaming
2000
1500
Foam index
1000
500
0
0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5 3,0 3, 5
Fig. 7. Comparison of expansion ratio of bitumen foaming and mortar foaming (upper); half-life of both technology (middle) and foam index of both technology (lower).
258 J. Qiu et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 190 (2018) 251e260
110
1,4
100
1,2
ITS control[MPa]
90
ITSR[%]
1
80
Hot prod uctio n method Hot productio n method
0,8 Mortar foam method 130C Mortar foam metho d 130C
70
Mortar foam method 100C Mortar foam metho d 100C
Bitumen foam method Bitumen foam method
0,6 60
50 100 150 200 50 100 150 200
Tmixture [°C] Tmixture [°C]
(a) (b)
1,60 1,00
1,40 0,80
Fracture energy[MPa.mm]
Stiffness[MPa/mm]
1,20 0,60
1,00 0,40
Hot productio n method
Hot productio n method
Mortar foam method 130C
Mortar foam metho d 130C 0,20
0,80 Mortar foam method 100C
Mortar foam metho d 100C
Bitumen foam method Bitumen foam method
0,60 0,00
50 100 150 200 50 100 150 200
Tmixture [°C] Tmixture [°C]
(c) (d)
Fig. 8. Indirect tension results of produced mixtures made by different mixing methods. (Tmixture is the temperature of different produced mixtures.)
1) It can be observed in Fig. 8a that with a decrease of the pro- And all the production methods are higher than the minimal
duction temperature, the strength of the specimen decreases requirement of 80%.
and the ultimate displacement increases. The indirect tension
strength is thought to be an indication of the cohesive perfor-
4. Trial applications
mance of the mixtures. The drop of the strength can be
explained by two reasons, the reduction of ageing during the
Two LE2AP trial sections of in total 2.3 km have been paved on
process of low temperature production and the presence of a
Dutch provincial roads N279 (24, 25 September 2016) and N338 (1
layered system.
October 2016) as shown in Fig. 9. The N279 connects the A2 near
2) It can be observed in Fig. 8b that the bitumen foam method has a
the city of Den Bosch to the city of Roermond. The test section of
relative low stiffness value. In the bitumen foam method, the
N279 is located near the city of Veghel, has a length of 1300 m and
mortar (either cold or warm) was added to the mixture together
is part of a dual carriage way with 2 2 lanes. Traffic intensity is
with the foamed bitumen. Theoretically, the foamed bitumen
24,000 vehicles per working day. The N338 connects the A12
cannot be 100% blended and reacted with the cold/warm mortar
motorway near city of Arnhem to the N317 close to the town of
at a temperature of 109 C. As a result, the mixtures made by the
Doesburg. The test section of N338 is a dual lane, single carriage-
foamed bitumen and the cold/warm mortar contain a layered
way. In 2009 the N338 near Doesburg was trafficked by 11,000
system (Qiu et al., 2015). This phenomenon is not present in the
vehicles per day.
hot production method and the mortar foam method.
As shown in Table 6, these test sections were designed with
3) The fracture energies are almost the same for different types of
two-layer porous asphalt, which consists of 25 mm PA 5/8 top layer
production method and has no direct relation with the pro-
and 45 mm PA 8/16 bottom layer with a maximum recycling per-
duction temperature.
centage up to 92%. Both bitumen foaming and mortar foaming
4) The ITSR value gives an indication of the loss of the material
methods were applied in the sections, and the bitumen foaming
strength due to the influence of the water. It can be observed
method was applied with fresh sand and filler without the cold
that the hot production method has a relative high ITSR value.
dosing of reclaimed mortar (Huurman et al., 2018). The test trials
J. Qiu et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 190 (2018) 251e260 259
5. Conclusions
Table 6
Description of asphalt mixtures used in the test sections.
A 2L-PA 5/8 top layer comprising reclaimed stone and fresh mortar Foamed bitumen, temperature at screed 100e110 C. 82%
with Panacea fibre.
B 2L-PA 8/16 bottom layer comprising reclaimed stone and reclaimed Foamed mortar, temperature at screed 100e110 C. 92%
and treated mortar.
C 2L-PA 8/16 bottom layer comprising reclaimed stone and fresh Foamed bitumen, temperature at screed 100e110 C. 82%
mortar.
Table 7
Field data of the two test sections.
help of both bitumen foaming and mortar foaming technologies, Huang, B., et al., 2005. Laboratory investigation of mixing hot-mix asphalt with
reclaimed asphalt pavement. Transport. Res. Rec. J. Transport. Res. Board 1929
these high recycling percentage (above 80%) mixtures can also
(1), 37e45.
be produced at a low production temperature as 105 C with Huurman, M., Mo, L.T., Woldekidan, M.F., 2010. Unravelling porous asphalt concrete,
good performance. towards a mechanistic material design tool. Road Mater. Pavement Des. 11 (3),
6) The re-use of the reclaimed mortar sand in the LE2AP concept, 583e612.
Huurman, M., et al., 2016. Low Emission2 asphalt pavement, LE2AP. In: 6th Eura-
together with the re-use of the PA-stone, provides possibilities sphalt & Eurobitume Congress, Prague, Czech Republic.
of producing porous asphalt mixtures with up to 90% recycling. Huurman, M., et al., 2018. Low Emission2 asphalt pavement. In: 2018 Annual
With the help of both bitumen foaming and mortar foaming Meeting of Association of Asphalt Paving Technologists, Jacksonville, USA.
Jacobs, M.M.J., van den Beemt, C.M.A., Sluer, B.W., 2010. Successful Dutch experi-
technologies, these mixtures can be produced at a low pro- ences with low energy asphalt concrete. In: 11th International Conference on
duction temperature as 105 C with good performance. Due to Asphalt Pavements, Nagoya, Japan.
the advantage of homogeneity and extra quality control of the Karlsson, R., Isacsson, U., 2003. Investigations on bitumen rejuvenator diffusion and
structural stability. J. Assoc. Asphalt Paving. Technol 72, 463e501.
mortar foaming method, this method is recommended to be Nahar, S.N., et al., 2013. First observation of the blending zone morphology at the
used for producing asfalt mixtures with a recycling percentage interface of reclaimed asphalt binder and virgin bitumen. Transport. Res. Rec. J.
above 90%. Transport. Res. Board 2307 (1), 1e9.
Nicholls, J.C., et al., 2008. Recycling surfacing materials back into thin surfacing
systems. Construct. Mater. 161 (3), 105e112.
Acknowledgements Pratico, F.G., et al., 2014. HMA sustainability: producing a recycled permeable mix
that performs as well as the original porous mix. In: Proceedings of the 3rd
International Conference on Transportation Infrastructure, ICTI 2014, Pisa, Italy.
The financial support from the European Commission
Qiu, J., et al., 2015. Reintroducing the intrinsic self healing properties in reclaimed
LIFEþ program is gratefully acknowledged. asphalt. Self Healing Mater. Pioneering Res. Netherlands 171e177.
Qiu, J., et al., 2016. Towards sustainable horizontal asphalt recycling. In: Proceedings
of the 4th Chinese-European Workshop on Functional Pavement Design, Delft,
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