Assessment of Environmental Impact and Energy Demand of Sulfur Modified Asphalt in Road Pavement

摘要

Bitumen, a viscoelastic material which is not able to perform satisfactory in asphalt pavement to control rutting deformation and cracking under adverse climatic conditions and heavy traffic loads due to poor elastic properties and adhesion. To improve the properties of asphalt binder, the binder needs to be altered with general types of additives to enhance the performance of bitumen. Utilization of Sulfur in flexible pavement as partial substitute of asphalt binder not only enhance the bitumen performance as well as consume a significant portion of sulfur produced from oil and gas industries as a by-product in road construction sector. Furthermore, to keep the environment eco-friendly, the energy demand and environmental impact assessment for new technologies on road pavement throughout its life cycle is becoming ever more important. In this study different scenarios have been defined by varying bindersulfur ratio and compared the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emission and energy demand to find out the optimum bitumen-sulfur ratio. It is found from this study that at 40% of sulfur content in the mix, energy demand and GHG emission will be reduced by 5.43% and 3.43% respectively as compared to the asphalt mix without sulfur inclusion.