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Sign up now for the Re-Road final conference organised by FEHRL to learn more about End of Life Strategies of Asphalt Pavements

The majority (90%) of European paved roads are paved with asphalt material. At the end of the service lifetime of a road, when the damaged road pavement can no longer fulfil its purpose as a comfortable carrier of traffic, it must be renewed. Although sustainable construction processes that conserve natural resources are well recognised within the asphalt industry, practices for the recycling of asphalt vary to a great extent across Europe. Both governments and industry recognise the potential environmental cost of road building. While traffic pollution often grabs the headlines, extracting new aggregate and disposing of old asphalt from road building can also cause significant environmental issues. While asphalt is nearly 100% recyclable, the routine use of recycled asphalt in road construction projects can be as little as 10% in some European countries. Today a large amount of demolished asphalt pavement ends up as unbound granular layers where neither the bituminous binders nor special aggregates from old surface layers are reused to their full potential.

The EC-funded Re-Road project, which ends at the end of 2012, has focused on innovative technologies and end of life strategies for asphalt road infrastructures. Such strategies have an important impact on the consumption of fossil binders and energy, and could improve the environmental footprint of the European transport system.

This free-of-charge conference will be held in English and cover the following topics:

• Dismantling: The impact and potentially adverse effect of different dismantling procedures on the quality of reclaimed asphalt (RA).
• Characterisation: The characterisation and technical evaluation of RA as a raw material.
• Handling strategies: The optimisation of the level of recycling and the optimal choice of target layer in the new or renewed road construction requires careful consideration of the RA characterisation to result in an environmentally-sound reuse of the material, or disposal of the marginal materials that cannot be recycled.
• Environmental criteria: Life cycle analyses (LCA) have been used as a tool for assessing the risks and benefits to the environment with the use of RA. Special attention has been paid to potential harmful substances (such as tar-containing asphalt).
• Cost-effective recycling: Short and long-term performance, life-time prediction by the modelling of asphalt mixes produced with different levels of RA and different techniques.
• Industrial processes: Studies of the potentially adverse effect on the final asphalt mix quality derived from the specific method for introducing the RA in the mixing plant. This includes how to avoid problems in the recycling of polymer modified RA and take full advantage of their special qualities.

A cocktail will be served at the end of the day.

Please click here to download the form to book your hotel room at the conference venue.

REGISTER online or contact Isabelle.lucchini@fehrl.org for more information.