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Garbage Highway: What Is Better To Build Roads From

2024

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Garbage Highway: What Is Better To Build Roads From
Garbage Highway: What Is Better To Build Roads From
Anonim

To begin with, I propose to recall what is the main component of asphalt, in addition to gravel, sand and mineral powder. This is bitumen obtained from the processing of minerals (oil, coal, shale). They, as we also all know very well, are gradually being exhausted. And in the meantime, solid waste is constantly accumulating in the world - not only on land, but also in water. Entire islands of garbage have already formed in the oceans, primarily plastic. This forces specialists in road construction, chemists and technologists to look for options for replacing traditional materials with new processed products.

Old tires are promising

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One of the most viable ideas is to get an asphalt substitute from old tires. For example, in the United States, according to the American Environmental Protection Agency, about 300 million tires are disposed annually, which, as a rule, are not recycled, but end up in landfills, constantly threatening with large fires, becoming nurseries of insects and rodents, carriers of diseases. At the same time, the rubber crumb obtained from the processing of tires in a mixture with asphalt forms a more durable than traditional, and "quiet" pavement. According to calculations, 2 kg of rubber crumb is obtained from one passenger tire.

Rubber asphalt is already being used in California, Arizona, and Florida. The potential of this material is being studied in Texas, Nebraska, South Carolina, New York, and New Mexico, but only 12 million tires are used for recycling. The American experience came in handy in Israel, where oil products are in particular shortage, but there are a lot of vehicles.

The use of tires for road construction was also offered by the Rusnano Corporation within the framework of the Innovative Road program. And supposedly “rubber asphalt” was even put on one of the capital's streets. And so that motorists would be more willing to hand over old tires for recycling, they were asked to pay compensation - as when handing over glass containers or waste paper in Soviet times. But, unfortunately, these initiatives have stalled. In any case, in Moscow. But recently, the idea was revived in Ugra (Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug). According to local media reports, a tire recycling center may appear in the Surgut region as early as next year, and tire reception centers will be located in various parts of the district.

Plastic way

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An even more interesting idea was voiced last summer by the Dutch company Royal VolkerWessels Stevin NV. It was the authorship of the Plastic Road project that attracted everyone's attention and made it take seriously, because VolkerWessels is considered the leading design office in Europe for major sports facilities - port, road and bridge construction, energy supply, telecommunications. The company has divisions in the UK and Canada, the number of employees approaches two tens of thousands of people, and it was founded - scary to say - in 1854!

The Dutch propose replacing asphalt concrete pavements (road pavements) that have become unusable with plastic ones casting from a mixture obtained as a result of the processing of household waste.

Solid "pros"

Other advantages of plastic roads are that their laying does not require a multi-layer complex base, even in regions with an unstable climate - as we have, for example. For this, according to the authors of the project, a sand cushion is enough, which at times simplifies, speeds up and cheapens road construction. At the same time, plastic roads will serve without a significant change in properties at temperatures from -40 0 to + 80 ° C, they are not afraid of fuel, oil, electrolyte, or other technical fluids. The cavities inside such roads allow you to place any type of communications: gas, water and electricity, communication lines. If necessary, the road can even be made heated, which can be useful in northern countries.

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The roadway will consist of identical molded panels assembled “butt-to-butt”. They can be done right away with the markup, and not put it with paint after construction. Moreover, theoretically, a plastic road can be painted in any color or change color depending on the same air temperature, thus warning drivers about changes in coupling properties. The authors of the project argue that the frictional qualities of car tires on a plastic road practically do not differ from adhesion on asphalt: they say that although the plastic is not hygroscopic, it is easy to make it as “rough” as asphalt, and numerous small holes will take moisture from the surface or what other types of drainage.

This is all theory

However, a number of questions remain. For example, the resource of such a road raises doubts, especially when operating in the extreme rows of highways, where mainly heavy trucks and buses go. And is it possible to create multilane roads using such technology at all, or will they have to be used only for the construction of any lanes? To get answers to these questions, Dutch designers enlisted the support of builders from the large local company KWS Infra and are ready to build the first road of this type in their native Rotterdam, whose city hall is also not against such an experiment. If it succeeds, all of Europe is next in line, and the rest of the world behind it.

But what about China?

Garbage At The Deonar Landfill Site As Trash Mountain Rising in Mumbai Swamps Modi 21st Century Vision … Boys play as cows graze through garbage at the Deonar landfill site in Mumbai, India, on Wednesday, March 11, 2015. Mumbai is running out of space for its waste, and Deonar, Asia's oldest and largest dumpsite, is bursting. Each day, more than 500 trucks line up along a two-lane dirt road in an eastern suburb, waiting to add to a mountain of refuse tall enough to submerge the White House twice over

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In the Chinese province of Shaanxi, the road was built from construction debris, using 6 million tons of waste to build a cushion. Thus, the Chinese saved about $ 47 million, 3.4 million cubic meters of sand, 32 tons of coal, and most importantly - 200 hectares of land that would be required for landfill. About 47 tons of garbage were spent per kilometer, and the length of the road (express, by the way) was 122 km.

But this is all nonsense compared to the press service of the government of the Leningrad Region in June last year that employees of the state environmental oversight committee detained several trucks with household garbage near the village of Skotnoye in the Vsevolozhsk district, which were used to dump the road under construction. The garbage was rammed there with bulldozers and covered with sand. Famously! One thing: household garbage is unstable and toxic, so it is still not suitable for road construction. At least in pure form.

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