Purpose/Objective:

Austroads seeks responses from appropriately experienced service providers to identify and investigate readily available options to decarbonise and improve the sustainability of asphalt pavements.

Scope:

The project will identify and rank the effectiveness of readily available options to decarbonise and improve the sustainability of asphalt pavements in Australia and New Zealand (i.e. options that do not require an extensive research effort to implement). In additional to options already available locally, the project must also consider options available overseas that could be readily implemented in Australia and New Zealand. The project will also identify barriers to implementation for readily available options, and the options that require further research prior to implementation.

This project will inform Austroads member agencies of:

• Potential options to decarbonise and improve the sustainability of asphalt pavements.
• The degree of improvement each option could potentially provide to decarbonisation and improved sustainability (i.e. the percentage improvement/CO2e reduction that should be expected from each option).
• Potential barriers to implement each option – for example, costs or uncertainty of impact on long-term pavement performance.
• Future research required to optimise decarbonisation and sustainability of asphalt pavements.
• Some of the options to be considered as part of the project include:
• Techniques to reduce energy consumption during the asphalt manufacturing process such as:
• Reducing manufacturing temperatures through the use of warm mix asphalt technologies.
• Use of covered storage bins to keep aggregates dry prior to asphalt manufacture.
• Reducing virgin binder and aggregate usage through the use of reclaimed/recycled materials (such as reclaimed asphalt pavement and rejuvenators).
• Using liquid anti-strip additives as an alternative to hydrated lime.
• Inclusion of biogenic material and/or crumb rubber to bituminous binders.
• Use of low carbon fuels (such as bio diesel) for heating.
• Changes to asphalt plant configuration to improve energy efficiency.
• Use of intelligent construction techniques to optimise the use of compaction equipment.
• Improvements to asphalt pavement construction standards (e.g. insitu air voids) to improve long term pavement performance.

The outputs will be used to inform future Austroads research with the aim of decarbonising and improving the sustainability of pavement material and to help Australia and New Zealand deliver on their net zero commitments.

This project will also inform future updates to asphalt related Austroads Technical Specifications and the Austroads Guide to Pavement Technology.

Deliverables:

This project will produce the following final deliverables:

• Research report
• Project data with populated metadata spreadsheet.
• Webinar