Life Cycle Assessment of Bio-Reused Asphalt Pavements

Abstract

This paper conducts a comprehensive Life CycleAssessment (LCA) of bio-reused asphalt pavements, focusing on three distinct technologies. The assessment evaluates various environmental impact categories, including climate change (global warming potential), metal depletion, freshwater consumption, freshwater eutrophication, ionizing radiation, land use, and terrestrial ecotoxicity. Comparisons against a baseline reveal significant differences in impact category indicators. Findings indicate that all technologies demonstrate a reduction in the climate change indicator (global warming potential) when considering biogenic carbon. Similarly, there is a consistent decrease observed in the metal depletion indicator across all technologies. However, an increase is noted in several impact category indicators, including freshwater consumption, freshwater eutrophication, ionizing radiation, land use, and terrestrial ecotoxicity, compared to the baseline. Of particular importance is the identification of land use as the most critical impact category indicator when compared with the baseline. This highlights the necessity of using waste biomass or biomaterials which are by-products from other industries to optimize the environmental performance of bio-reused asphalt pavements.