Processing Recycled Asphalt

Treatment processes & plants for road pavements | FBB

We developed a new treatment process for the production of road pavement to keep as much recycled asphalt as possible in the loop.

Road reconstructions generate as much excess material as is used for the new construction. The old road could therefore serve as the raw material stock for the new one. However, the production of high quality rolled asphalt requires differentiated, homogeneous base materials. In order to be able to recycle the demolition material, the heterogeneous, bitumen-bound material conglomerate is processed. In the end, mixtures are available that can be fed back into production in an optimised way by applying a specially developed software. Primary raw materials are only required in small quantities. The amount of reusable material has been considerably increased; the proportion to be disposed of significantly reduced.

PDF Speech "Potentiale im Asphaltkreislauf" at the Swiss Energy Forum (German)

Road pavement consists of a elaborate structure of layers, precisely matched to the requirements of the respective road section

To find solutions for treatment, we studied the material conglomerate of stone and bitumen down to microscopic scale.

To dive into the processing possibilities - in the truest sense of the word - it is part of our job to get our fingers (or more) dirty every now and then.

While a trained human eye can distinguish a pure stone from bitumen-stone compounds, the differences for machines are vanishingly small. We investigated a wide variety of analytical methods.

For the analysis of the excavated material, we evaluated a variety of technologies (including image, laser, spectral, thermal) and combined them with machine-learning processes. All we can reveal is: the final solution was different;)

After a test plant performed well in productive use, we are now supporting the from-scratch conception of a large-scale recycling pavement plant.

“from
«The pile is getting bigger and bigger... What can we do?»
to
«It's nice to have such a large stock of material.»”

Christian Gubler, President of the board

production start

2022

Our contribution:

Technology evaluation
Technology development
Process development
Simulation & Prototyping
Facitlity concepts
interaction design
Software programming
Optimisation algorithms

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