Teaching Old Asphalt New Tricks

Asphalt Contractor, November 2015
Jessica Stoikes, Associate Editor

The primary cause of failure in a pavement is oxidation. Asphalt binder, which is the material used to keep aggregates together, weakens over time,becoming brittle and breaking apart.  Water then penetrates into the asphalt base, causing it to shift and settle, leading to further cracking and depressions in the surface.

This oxidation process is what the team at Collaborative Aggregates sought to change.
“The Massachusetts DOT was looking for an environmentally friendly product that allowed them to use higher percentages of RAP and RAS in their mix design,” says Jay Bianchini, vice president of operations at Collaborative Aggregates. “The principles of green chemistry required us to ensure that any rejuvenator we developed was sustainable. From the very beginning, that was our goal. It was just a matter of developing a formulation that truly rejuvenated aged binder and met our green initiative.”
The result was Delta S, an asphalt rejuvenator that was designed to chemically reverse the oxidation that takes place in asphalt as it’s heated at the plant and subsequent aging after it’s been paved.
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