Recycled Asphalt Pavement (RAP) offers enormous sustainability benefits but creates technical challenges when incorporated into road construction. Soil Solutions’ EBS technology enables effective RAP utilization while ensuring excellent road performance.
The RAP Challenge:
Aged Binder: Old asphalt in RAP has oxidized and hardened, lacking the flexibility and binding properties of fresh asphalt. This makes RAP difficult to compact and prone to cracking.
Variable Quality: RAP quality varies depending on source, age, and original materials. Inconsistency creates construction challenges and performance concerns.
Mix Design Complexity: Incorporating RAP requires complex mix designs to account for existing asphalt content, aged binder properties, and variable aggregate characteristics.
How EBS Enables RAP Utilization:
Binder Rejuvenation: EBS reactivates aged asphalt binders in RAP, restoring flexibility and binding properties, improving compaction and workability, and creating durable, cohesive mixes.
Stabilization: EBS provides additional binding beyond rejuvenated asphalt, compensates for variable RAP quality, and ensures consistent performance regardless of RAP source.
Simplified Mix Design: EBS allows higher RAP percentages than traditional methods, reduces need for virgin materials, and creates robust mixes less sensitive to RAP variations.
RAP Incorporation Methods:
Full Depth Reclamation (FDR): Pulverize existing asphalt in place, mix with EBS stabilizers, create new base using 100% RAP, and achieve excellent structural performance.
Cold In-Place Recycling (CIR): Mill existing surface, mix milled RAP with EBS, compact to create recycled base layer, and apply new wearing surface.
Base Layer Construction: Incorporate RAP into base layers with EBS stabilization, reduce virgin aggregate requirements by 50-80%, and achieve superior base strength and durability.
Environmental Benefits:
Using RAP with EBS stabilization diverts asphalt from landfills (waste reduction), reduces virgin aggregate mining (resource conservation), lowers carbon emissions from material production and transportation, and creates circular economy for road infrastructure.
Performance Advantages:
Roads constructed with RAP and EBS demonstrate equivalent or superior structural performance to virgin materials, excellent durability and load-bearing capacity, resistance to cracking and rutting, and long-term maintenance-free performance.
Sustainable RAP utilization. Soil Solutions delivers proven recycling solutions: www.soilsolutions.com
