March 10th, 2020 : Plastic Paving

[xoxoxoBruce]

Mexico is the latest country to pave roads with recycled plastic. The road was opened for use November 13 in the state of Guanajuato. The road is 2.5 miles long and used 1.7 tons of recycled plastic, according to Dow Plastics Technology Mexico. Located in the central state of Mexico, the road connects Cuerámaro and Irapuato. This area is home to companies like General Motors, Ford and General Mills.
According to Paula Sans, Dow Mexico’s director of packaging and specialty plastics, “The advantage of using recycled plastic products is that they can be used on all types of highways, not only in high-performance products, which can extend the life span of any paved road.”

I weighed an empty 500ml water bottle at 11.28 grams so about 40.2 bottles to the pound and 136,680 bottles in 1.7 tons.
That’s only 54,672 bottles per mile, hell some roads they could pick up enough plastic along the side of the road to repave it.

The project is a joint effort by Dow, Vise Construction, Lasfalto, Omnigree plastics recycler and Surfax engineering-construction. Sans said that Dow plans to do more testing of this concept, with the hope that it can apply to larger scale construction projects.
Plastic roads have also been introduced in India, Los Angeles and South Africa. It’s been a growing solution to deal with the increasing threat of plastic waste.

According to Dow Plastics Technology Mexico, the 1.7 tons of eco-pavement equal up to 425,000 plastic packaging units. The development of the highway plastic was a private affair that involved the companies Dow, Vise, Surfax, Lasfalto and Omnigreen, and its use in the highway was championed by the federal body Communications and Transportation Secretariat (SCT). Regardless of the politics that are surely involved in the project (governments loooove to take credit for this sort of initiatives and present themselves as super eco-friendly), this project sets a great precedent.

425,000 PPU ÷ 3400 lbs = 125 PPU/lb. 453.59 grams ÷ 125PPU/lb = 3.63 grams per PPU.

Through a press release, Dow praised the durability of the new eco-material, which could become the standard in the years to come: “This new technology not only offers a possible solution to the management of plastic waste, it also theoretically prolongs the life span of highways by 50% compared to conventional asphalt. The advantage of using recycled plastic products is that they can be used on all types of highways, not only in high-performance products, which can extend the life span of any paved road”.
It is important to note that the world at large is facing a crisis when it comes to the management of recycling materials. Many developed countries such as Australia and New Zealand traditionally send their plastics to China to be recycled. However, China is no longer accepting them and a lot of plastic is either being stored (a costly and not very useful solution) or, worse, it ends up in landfill. This was a pilot study, but it will surely at least trigger the curiosity of other governments and companies. And remember: they both love good PR, and what could be better PR than being eco-friendly in these times of true environmental distress?

To me plastic = slippery, and wet plastic = slipperier. But these five companies building this private project in the middle of
somewhere would weigh that problem accordingly. Right?

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[glatt]

Seems to me that if you mixed melted plastic with gravel you could end up with a non-skid surface.

[xoxoxoBruce]

That sounds logical, at least until the stones get ripped out or worn smooth, but the picture looks a lot like blacktop.

[Happy Monkey]

Previously

[xoxoxoBruce]

That sounds like the are using the plastic in place of the petroleum tar to glue/hold the aggregate together. That makes more sense than using the shredded plastic to replace the aggregate.

I don't know if India has the truck traffic/tonnage we do. I read that the engineers planning work on the interstates don't want to know what the car traffic is, just the trucks because they'll tear up the roads long before the cars do appreciable damage.

I wonder how the test road in Los Angeles is doing.?