Managing Thermal Energy of Exhaust Gases in the Production of Asphalt Mixtures

摘要

Production of construction material is energy demanding and connected with present environmental issues. Hot-mix asphalt production is no exception. For many years, asphalt industry has been trying to find the balance between dynamic fuel market and possibilities of improving the production process to reduce costs incurred by technology development. The development progress relies on careful assessment of the production process in order to find every possibility that may contribute to energy conservation. Many interventions have been successful in rationalizing energy consumption, but today’s challenge is to go further in developing a production process that is more environmentally friendly and acceptable in terms of energy consumption. Proposed research and preliminary results are a contribution to establishing a model that describes the relationship of reducing moisture content and increasing the temperature of mineral mixtures by using the heat of exhaust gas in a short-term drying process. The proposed model could enable optimization of the technological process of production of asphalt mixtures and contribute to the implementation of technical innovations in hot-mix asphalt production.