Impact Analysis Using Life Cycle Assessment of Asphalt Production from Primary Data

Abstract

Road construction and maintenance have a great impact on the environment, owing to the huge volumes of resources involved. Consequently, current production procedures and technologies must be properly investigated, for identifying and quantifying the life cycle environmental impacts produced. In this paper, primary data, i.e., site-specific data directly collected or measured on a reference plant, are analyzed for calculating the impact of the production of a hot mix asphalt. The analysis is performed in a from “cradle to gate” approach to estimate the environmental burdens of the production process in an average plant, representative of the existing technology in Italy and Southern Europe. The research outcomes are useful to increase reliability in quantification of asphalt production impacts and the contribution of each component. The results represent a reference basis for producers, designers, and contractors in the decisional phases, identifying the most critical aspects in the current practice and the possible improvements for reducing impacts of road industries. In this regard, efficient energy technologies for reducing the production temperature (such as warm mix asphalt) and burned fuels are proven to assure relevant improvements in the environmental performance.

A Novel Integrated Interval Rough MCDM Model for Ranking and Selection of Asphalt Production Plants

“…Further, by developing the original interval rough MCDM model, the following contributions can be singled out: (1) Creating a new IRN PIPRECIA-IRN EDAS approach that enables assessment, ranking and selection in the field of road construction in an objective way. (2) Insensitivity of the model increasing the size of initial matrix.…”

“…Therefore, it is necessary to constantly manage the area of road construction, as well as to take into account the type of roads, its construction and the lifespan that is causally related to its maintenance. Road construction and maintenance have a great impact on the environment, so, according to Sollazo et al [1], asphalt production technology needs to be properly researched in order to quantify the environmental impact. In order to enable the fastest Mathematics 2021, 9, 269 2 of 20 and most efficient construction of roads, there are a large number of asphalt production plants that serve a certain narrow geographical area.…”

Evaluation of the Physical, Chemical and Environmental Properties of Ladle Furnace Slag for Their Utilization as Filler in Bituminous Mixtures

“…The choice of bituminous mixtures as a waste receiver material is due to the fact that it is the product with the highest economic and environmental cost used in infrastructure. This is due to the fact that in most cases it is necessary to heat large masses of materials to high temperatures [21]. In turn, ladle furnace slag is used because it is a waste product of the metallurgical industry that produces a large proportion.…”

Environmental Impact Assessment of Different Warm Mix Asphalts

“…Due to the very large amounts of resources used, road construction and maintenance have a major impact on the environment. Consequently, current production technologies need to be properly studied to identify and quantify the environmental impact on the life cycle of the road structure [1][2][3].…”

“…Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a popular methodology in various fields of research, due to the fact that it analyses the impact on the environment for a product, process, service or activity by recognizing and evaluating the input-output data used by the system and providing the output data in a life cycle perspective [9,10]. In the field of roads, the research has been carried out mainly to assess the environmental impact of HMA [2,5,8,11] and HMA containing RAP [12][13][14]. Due to the growing interest in the production of asphalt mixtures at low temperatures in order to protect the environment, the researchers also addressed the subject of WMA and their comparison with HMA, produced at usual temperatures.…”