Recycling of asphalt has become a well-established practice in many countries, however the road pavement industry remains a bulk consumer of extracted raw materials. Novel solutions that find root in circular economy concepts and life-cycle approaches are needed in order to enable optimisation of infrastructure resource efficiency, starting from the design stage and spanning the whole value chain in the construction sector. Itis within this framework that the present study presents a full-scale validation of asphalt mixtures specifically designed to ensure durability of flexible road pavements and at the same time enabling the reuse of reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) through the incorporation of bio-materials as recycling agent. These bio-recycled asphalt mixtures have been first designed in laboratory and subsequently validated in a real scale experiment conducted at the accelerated pavement testing facilities at IFSTTAR. Four pavement sections were evaluated: three test sections with innovative bio-materials, and a reference section with a conventional, high modulus asphalt mix (EME2). Two tests were realized: a rutting test and a fatigue test and for each of them the evolution of bio-recycled asphalt mixtures properties as well as the pavement deteriorations were recorded and studied. Evolution of the bio-asphalt mixtures was monitored for a 5 months period after paving by a bespoke nondestructive micro-coring, extracting and recovering methodology developed at the Western Research Institute (WRI). The structural health of the pavement sections was monitored through periodic falling weight deflectometer (FWD) as well as with strain gages and temperature sensors. As a result the three tailored bio-asphalt mixtures performed similarly or better than the control mixture, both in terms of property evolutions and durability.

The recent drive to find ways to increase sustainability and decrease costs in asphalt paving has led researchers to find innovative ways to incorporate more recycled materials and bioderived binders into mixes with varying success. A new novel bio-derived binder made from refined pine chemistry stabilized with a polymer can increase the sustainability of asphalt mixes while maintaining pavement performance. Laboratory performance testing was conducted on asphalt mixes containing 50% Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement (RAP) by mix weight and the novel bio-derived binder. Results show that the bio-derived binder outperforms the conventional 50/70 pen grade binder mixes with respect to resistance to thermal cracking and adequately passes all requirements for pavements with 20-year design loadings of less than 30 million ESALs. This research shows that asphalt mixes containing 50% RAP and a bio-derived binder can be designed to pass performance criteria at low, intermediate, and high temperatures without the need of neat bitumen.

Over the past decade, the development of various monomers and polymeric materials from renewable natural resources has received increasing attention. Soybean oil, as one of the most abundant vegetable oils, has been widely used in recent studies. To enhance the reactivity of pure soybean oil, it can undergo through different processes such as acrylation and epoxidation. In this article, we investigated the viability of polymerized acrylated epoxidized soybean oil (PAESO) in the composition of pressure sensitive adhesives (PSAs). We studied the physical and rheological properties of PSAs composed of poly(styrene‐b‐AESO), and five different tackifiers and three plasticizers. To verify the compatibility of the tackifiers with the biopolymer, a library of 15 PSAs was prepared through solvent blending method and tested by differential scanning calorimetry. The viable formulations were then prepared through hot‐melt blending and characterized using 180° peel tester, and advanced rheometric expansion system. Results showed that the combination of an ester of hydrogenated rosin and a high solvating plasticizer with the synthesized biopolymer indicated best performance relative to other formulations. The comparison of this candidate with its petroleum‐based counterpart containing SIS demonstrates promising potential of the material to perform as well as commercialized PSAs. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2018, 135, 46618.

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