"Paving industry sector faces nowadays different challenges as the need for less maintenance, more silent and more environmental friendly pavements. The use of crumb rubber (CR) derived from end#of#life tires (ELTs) in bituminous mixtures replies to all these needs however its wide implementation has not been extended due mainly of the following barriers that prevent its wide implementation are:
i. A crumb rubber alone cannot be placed directly into the mixes (dry method) because it will swell and absorb the bitumen causing raveling in the roads
ii. The wet method works well but requires that every contractor buys expensive equipment
iii. If crumb rubber is used in terminal blends it is essentially a waste of product because over time it becomes all digested
The solution proposed in this initiative to overcome these barriers is the use of use of reacted and activated rubber that it can be used directly into the plugmill of a contractor’s plant. The SILENT RUBBER PAVEMENTS project main goal is to market uptake and achieve a wider deployment of the RARX technology, based in a patent of CONSULPAV, that has the best of both methods:
• Easy to apply and use as in the “dry method”
• Performance and cost effectiveness beyond that of the “wet method”
To enter in the global market, two large companies (Valoriza SM- Composan) have made an agreement with a specialized SME (Consulpav, a first industrial applicant) who has developed and patented the RARX technology to exploit at European level. SACYR, a multinational pavement construction company present in more than 20 countries, will be the responsible for the pilot construction in different climate and evaluation. Our distributor in Italy, FHL group will assist the consortia in internationalizing our commercialization strategy.
The project objective is to facilitate the commercialization of RARX technology. This technology has already demonstrated mechanical improvements at low scale on road pavements, as well as a reduction of acoustic contamination. Moreover, this technology has added environmental benefits as it makes use of used tyres.
To achieve this objective it is necessary to meet several partial objectives:
1) Increase the production capacity of VALORIZA crumb rubber plant, from 1.000 tons/year to 5.000 tons/year with physicochemical properties as homogeneous as possible in order to get an end product with consistent performance.
2) Upscale the pilot plant of COMPOSAN to be able to produce SILENT RUBBER PAVE innovative product with annual production rhythms which should exceed 7.000 tons /year fixed.
3) Develop two sections drivers (1 km each) in two different climatic environments (country in northern Europe and southern Europe country) to check the final performance in both climates.
a. There will be made a comparative with other 2 sections drives build with normal asphalt.
4) Deploying a marketing product strategy in order to deliver the economic objectives in the business plan.
"
