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AnonTechie writes:
"Haifang Wen is professor in civil and environmental engineering at Washington State University where he uses his education to research new ways of making asphalt better and cheaper.
'The asphalt used in roads has traditionally been made from aggregate small particles of rock and products made from crude oil. When crude oil is refined, it produces a variety of products including light fuels like gasoline, heavier plastics and also dense asphalt. But the price of asphalt made from crude oil is pretty high, about $700 to $800 per ton', Wen said. 'That really adds up. One lane of a highway, paved for one mile, costs about $1 million. Now you know where your taxes go !'
One alternative to traditional asphalt that Wen and the people in his lab are looking into is bioasphalt. Instead of using petroleum, waste cooking oil is processed into asphalt.
http://news.wsu.edu/2014/02/18/rock-doc-designing- better-asphalt-at-wsu/"
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Fluffeh on Saturday March 01 2014, @12:51AM
I find it interesting how they talk very openly about the current cost of asphalt, but no-where in the article does it mention how much this will cost - not even a ballpark saving of "about 10%" or "around half" etc. Seems it would have made a great addition to hyping your discovery when it came to this sort of release.
(Score: 1) by klondike0 on Saturday March 01 2014, @03:00PM
Yep, hype opportunity missed. It seems a little premature to say where the cost of the feedstock end up at for the quantities required, but the article states there could be temperature reduction in making asphalt from 300 F to 220 F, which I take to mean an energy savings of 25 - 40% at the construction site.
If there's that kind of tangible economic benefit for the construction company, it might actually make to the real world depending on what happens in the crop oil market over the next 10 years.