Recycling of Plastic and Rubber Tire Waste in Asphalt Pavements

Abstract

AbstractThis paper discusses some important issues related to the use of recycled thermoplastics and rubber tire waste in asphalt binders for hot-mix pavements. Both high temperature rheological and low temperature fracture studies are presented on recycled polyethylene, devulcanized and crumb rubber-modified asphalt binders. The results are compared to unmodified and commercially available modified binders. This research is especially timely in light of the U.S. Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991, Section 1038 which, starting in 1995, will force state and local governments to use significant amounts of recycled rubber tire or plastic waste in federally funded highway projects.High temperature rheological measurements of the loss modulus, loss tangent and complex modulus show a significant improvement when only small quantities of crumb rubber, devulcanized crumb rubber or waste polyethylene are added to the asphalt binders.The low temperature fracture performance of the modified asphalts is greatly influenced by the interfacial strength between the dispersed and continuous phase. The fracture toughness increases dramatically, only when low molecular weight polymers are grafted in-situ onto the rubber and polymer dispersed phases in order to strengthen the interface. This points to a crack-pinning mechanism as being responsible for the dramatic increase in fracture toughness that is observed in this work. Single phase, devulcanized crumb rubber-asphalt systems perform quite poorly at low temperatures.