Brisa Concessão Rodoviária and the Instituto Superior de Engenharia de Lisboa (ISEL) created the “Living Lab” to investigate “innovative materials” for pavements that “reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase efficiency in the use of natural resources to the conservation of the motorway network”, the motorway concessionaire announced today.
In total, six pilot tests have already been carried out over a length of almost 10 kilometers on the A3, the motorway that connects Porto to Valença, and the A6, which connects Marateca to Caia.
Among the materials used, recycled plastics and rubber from end-of-life tires stand out, using a new “unprecedented” technology in Europe.
According to Brisa, this is an “innovative solution that consists of the complete digestion of recycled rubber from end-of-life tires in bitumen, allowing the change of its physical and chemical characteristics, increasing the durability and resilience of pavements, enhancing also the use of recovered bituminous mixtures”.
These tests allow evaluating the use of bituminous mixtures recovered from pavements, in percentages of 20% and 30%, which for the first time will be used in wearing layers of national highways. Other tests focus on the use of graphene, which has the “potential to increase the durability” of pavements.
The solutions being tested allow “to reduce the extraction of aggregates from quarries, as well as the consumption of bitumen from petroleum distillation, either through the use of recovered bituminous mixtures, or through the use of end-of-life tires or recycled plastics ”.
These tests aim to evaluate the possibilities of reducing the environmental impact of highway conservation, with a “potential annual reduction of 600 tons of COtwo for the atmosphere, the equivalent of 23 thousand car trips between Lisbon and Porto, and a reduction of 19 thousand tons of waste, contributing to the valorization of these materials and the implementation of an increasingly circular economy”.
Manuel Melo Ramos, CEO of the company, reveals that “the Brisa Group aims to reduce, by 2030, carbon emissions of scope 1 and 2 by 60% and emissions associated with the supply chain by 42% based on 2021″.
And he adds: “We also want to promote 100% Circular Economy in all operations by the end of this decade. Goals that will only be met with innovative solutions like the ones we are testing, which guarantee a significant reduction in emissions and the use of waste without compromising the safety and efficiency of our highways”.
The “Living Lab” is a project open to several partners and suppliers, which already brings together partner companies such as Cepsa, JRS Rettenmaier, Polyco and Iterchimica and suppliers such as Sirplaste, Gabriel Couto, Mota Engil, Alves Ribeiro, Tecnovia.
Brisa and ISEL’s objective is to “increase the number of solutions and partners participating in the initiative”.
