Current Research | Recycled Materials Resource Center

Recycled Materials Web Map

Posted on February 12, 2019 by apakes

The Recycled Materials Web Map (RMWM) is an on-line Geographic Information System (GIS) web application that connects producers and consumers of recyclable material was developed to assist engineers and contractors in the beneficial reuse of nonhazardous recycled materials in transportation projects. The RMWM is comprised of four core layers: providers, stockpiles, specifications, and case studies. Providers of recycled material can locate their facility and enter contact information. The stockpile layer, connected to the provider layer, allows facility managers to add or update information about their recycled material stockpiles including material type(s), application(s), availability, and cost information. Multiple stockpiles can be associated with each provider. The specification layer includes both Department of Transportation (DOT) specifications and environmental regulations pertaining to the beneficial reuse of recycled material based on specific location, material type, and application. The case study layer locates projects that successfully utilized recycled materials and includes information regarding the material type, application, volume data, and any additional documentation. The web map utilizes search capabilities to locate nearby stockpiles to minimize transportation costs that typically dictate the use of large volumes of materials. The RMWM provides key information which engineers and contractors need to successfully utilize recycled materials, thereby preserving limited natural resources and benefiting the project and society as a whole.

The RMWM is hosted at the Center for Advanced Public Safety (CAPS) at The University of Alabama and was funded through a pooled fund supporting the Recycled Materials Resource Center (RMRC) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. During the first phase of this work, the RMWM was designed, developed, and tested with preliminary data. A beta version of the web application has been demonstrated to be a useful tool, but there are several areas of the application that need to be addressed for widespread use of this web tool. To address these areas, The University of Alabama has been contracted for a second phase of the project which will wrap up in 2019.

Environmental Benefits of Cold-in-Place Recycling

Posted on May 22, 2017 by Tyler Klink

The United States uses approximately 1.3 billion tons of aggregate every year, 58% of which is for road construction. Furthermore, 90% of aggregate used in road construction is virgin aggregate. With the increasing cost of virgin material sand the growing pressure to build more sustainably, the use of recycled materials in roads is becoming increasingly widespread. The triple bottom line of sustainability requires that a project is economically, socially, and environmentally beneficial relative to conventional methods. Cold-in-In-Place Recycling (CIR) is a method for highway resurfacing that has become more widely used in the past decade for its demonstrated benefits to the triple bottom line.

The project objective was to quantify the environmental life cycle benefits associated with using Cold-in-Place Recycling (CIR) for highway resurfacing instead of the conventional Mill and Overlay process. Equipment used and the quantity of materials used for both the CIR process and what would have been used in the Mill and Overlay process for the same project were collected for nine highway projects in Wisconsin. With this information, a life cycle assessment (LCA) tool, Pavement Life-cycle Assessment tool for Environment and Economic Effects (PaLATE) was used to analyze and compare each project’s data.

More information may be found in the following file:

Environmental Benefits of CIR TRB Report

Chemical Characterization of Leachate Produced from RCA

Posted on February 17, 2016 by efbloom

The proposed NPDES regulations in the State of Washington, requiring a pH below 8.5 at the point of discharge from recycled concrete aggregate (RCA), may have the unintended consequence of prohibiting the use of recycled concrete materials in commonly accepted concrete recycling applications; e.g., as unbound base course or fill material or aggregate in ready-mix concrete. A more appropriate method to determine compliance with pH regulations would be to determine a “point of compliance” and enforce pH regulations at that point. However, selection of an appropriate point of compliance is hindered by disagreement in previous studies on the pH of leachate as well as its acid neutralizing capacity (alkalinity). Most laboratory studies and many field studies suggest that the leachate pH should be very high (e.g., >9) for extended periods of time; however, the NAICS data presented in Figure 1 and results of our own field studies (Chen et al., 2012; Chen et al., 2013) suggest that leachate pH values above 8.5 are actually infrequent. Here we propose to couple laboratory leaching studies, utilizing representative saturation and geochemical conditions, with results from a forensic examination of an RCA base course located at the MnROAD test facility to determine mechanisms that may limit the production of high pH of leachate.

For more information:

RMRC Proposal – RCA Leachate pH