Utilization of waste plastics to enhance the performance of modified hot mix asphalt

Abstract

Large quantities of refused plastic material were produced due to industrial development. These solid waste having an adverse impact on environment. Moreover, the increase of the plastic refuse which causes severe fear for public led in parallel to search effective and useful manner to find out any other method to sustainable. The paper was conducted to find out any treatment for the problem of the management of plastic municipal solid waste (MSW) in Jordan using as additive in the modification of road aggregate performance. In the same time, this will contribute to reduce the environmental impact of the plastic solid waste. This refused plastic was utilized to improve the asphalt performance. The first sets of experiment were carried out upon a six samples were tested with asphalt percentages of (5, 5.5, 6, 6.5, 7 and 7.5) at 60°C and the results gave that the optimum asphalt ratio was to be 7%. The second sets of testing were conducted for the optimum amount of refused plastic added to another six sets of samples tested at different percentage of refused plastic as follows (2, 2.5, 3, 3.5, 4 and 4.5 %) at 60oC and the results gave that the optimum ratio of plastic added was 4%. The results of the comparative study between hot mix asphalt and modified hot mix asphalt show that the addition of plastic has a significant positive effect on the properties of HMA, and mitigating the adverse effect on the environment.