Life Cycle Assessment of Sustainable Asphalt Pavement Solutions Involving Recycled Aggregates and Polymers

Abstract

The pursuit of sustainability in the field of road asphalt pavements calls for effective decision-making strategies, referring to both the technical and environmental sustainability of the solutions. This study aims to compare the life cycle impacts of several pavement solution alternatives involving, in the binder and base layers, some eco-designed, hot- and cold-produced asphalt mixtures made up of recycled aggregates in substitution for natural filler and commercial recycled polymer pellets for dry mixture modification. The first step focused on the technical and environmental compatibility assessment of the construction and demolition waste (CDW), jet grouting waste (JGW), fly ash (FA), and reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP). Then, three non-traditional mixtures were designed for the binder layer and three for the base layer and characterized in terms of the stiffness modulus. Asphalt pavement design allowed for the definition of the functional units of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), which was applied to all of the pavement configurations under analysis in a “from cradle to grave” approach. The LCA results showed that the best performance was reached for the solutions involving a cold, in-place recycled mixture made up of RAP and JGW in the base layer, which lowered all the impact category indicators by 31% on average compared to those of the traditional pavement solution. Further considerations highlighted that the combination of a cold base layer with a hot asphalt mixture made up of CDW or FA in the binder layer also maximized the service life of the pavement solution, providing the best synergistic effect.

Building Sustainable Pavements: Investigating the Effectiveness of Recycled Tire Rubber as a Modifier in Asphalt Mixtures

“…Zheng et al [5] recently investigated a sustainability assessment comparing various techniques, including thin asphalt (TA), warm mix asphalt (WMA) and hot mix asphalt (HMA) with RAP (reclaimed asphalt pavement), concluding that HMA including RAP was the most sustainable both from an economical and societal viewpoint. Oreto et al [6] reached a similar conclusion in regards to the incorporation of RAP-based materials. For RAP-based materials, Antunes et al [7] investigated the effect of RAP on bituminous mix characteristics concluding on the viability of multi-recycling towards a more sustainable pavement structure.…”

ASINA Project: Towards a Methodological Data-Driven Sustainable and Safe-by-Design Approach for the Development of Nanomaterials

“…In the second, ASINA-SMM explores novel digital technologies and artificial intelligence for safe production while maintaining operational excellence (Ortelli et al, 2020;López De Ipiña et al, 2021). In the third, ASINA-SMM merges life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC) in order to ensure the safety, sustainability, and cost-effectiveness (Perucca and Benveniste, 2010;Oreto et al, 2021).…”

A Synthesis of Express Analytic Hierarchy Process (EAHP) and Partial Least Squares-Structural Equations Modeling (PLS-SEM) for Sustainable Construction and Demolition Waste Management Assessment: The Case of Malaysia

“…Inappropriate management of CDW poses harmful impacts on the environment by taking up land resources as landfills [30,37,38], generating harmful pollutants that endanger the atmosphere, and taking over natural resources that are already limited [14,39,40]. Landfills, for instance, are accountable for large amounts of methane gas emissions via decomposition of mixed CDW overtime, which is more harmful than CO2 with regards to global warming impacts [30].…”