US-China Workshop on Energy and Environment in the Development of Sustainable Asphalt Pavements

Introduction

Energy and environment play a significant role in the quality of life, world’s economic growth, and stability. Many nations such as the USA and China depend on foreign oil to meet their energy needs. Besides, the global environment has recently been degraded to such level that it poses some threats to world’s stability. At such time of depleting energy and threatened global environment, reducing the cost of energy and materials to build pavements in an environmentally benign way is vital to ensure the sustainability of our roadway infrastructure, which is one of the biggest infrastructures in USA and China. Proposed herein is two-day workshop to discuss and present topics such as energy, environment, sustainability, ecology, lifecycle cost in the light of asphalt pavement and paving materials among international researchers, in particular researchers from the United States of America and from the Republic of China. Two groups of researchers are selected to interact. Group one is selected based on the fact that they have experience in energy, environment, ecology, and sustainability research but not necessarily in asphalt pavement. The group two is from the asphalt area.

Need for the Workshop

The main goal of this workshop is that newly built or rehabilitated roads have to be sustainable, cost-effective and energy saving during construction and service. Use of recycled materials and technologies for producing long-lasting, durable pavement is targeted. Recycling is the way to go for preserving the World’s limited natural resources for the generations to come. There is a need for using WMA technologies that appear to allow a reduction in temperatures at which asphalt mixes are produced and placed. The benefits of warm and cold mix is the reduction in energy consumption required by burning fuels to heat traditional hot mix asphalt to temperatures in excess of 325° F at the production plant. WMA or cold mix asphalts allow the asphalt binder to become viscous enough to completely coat the aggregate and provide good workability during laying and compaction, if done properly. The decreased production temperature brings additional benefit of reduced emissions from burning fuels, fumes, and odors generated at the plant and at the construction site. Often times, rubber modified asphalt pavements are less noisy. Pavements made from modified asphalt and aggregates using polymer, rubber, nano-clay, etc. are reported to be mechanically highly durable and long lasting. With the advanced understanding of physical properties, healing, aging and temperature susceptibility characteristics of asphalt binder, it is now possible to manufacture binder and pavements that can adjust their behavior at low and high field operating temperatures. Asphalt pavements can be coated for absorbing green house gas from vehicle, as well as can be networked for solar and heat energy production. There is a need for the world experts in asphalt materials and pavements to meet and discuss the advances and requirements for energy production and sustainable development of asphalt pavements. To this end, a workshop on sustainable and energy producing pavements will help improve competitiveness in developing the scientific and technical expertise necessary to sustain the new energy economy of the 21st century. This workshop will initiate a new education effort designed to train the next generation of technical workers and researchers in the asphalt area.