With concerns about the economy abounding and unpredictable oil prices constantly fluctuating, there have been efforts to save money on asphalt by taking harder asphalts such as recycled asphalt pavement (RAP) and softening them with rejuvenating agents. In addition to saving money, using renewable or recycled materials rather than crude oil-derived materials to soften the asphalt could be beneficial to the environment. The environmentally-friendly industrial materials used in this study were a soybean wax and recycled cooking oil. The results of these two materials were compared with a commercially used rejuvenating agent which is derived from crude oil. All three of these materials softened an air-blown PG 70-28 base asphalt and improved its low-temperature properties. When tested with the bending beam rheometer (BBR) according to the AASHTO M320 specification, the recycled cooking oil was found to be the most promising, followed by the rejuvenating agent and the soybean wax.
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