Watering down the pavement? Chemist says used engine oil in asphalt is causing crumbling road infrastructure!(NEWS)

AuthorRoss, Ian

The use of recycled motor oil in asphalt cement is reducing Ontario roads to rubble, said a forensic researcher at Queen's University who's been studying the performance of highway pavement for two decades.

"Garbage in, garbage out," was how Simon Hesp, a Dutch-born polymer chemist and professor, summed up the growing industry practice of mixing cheap oil additives into road pavement, which he considers the root cause of a provincewide problem of premature cracking, potholing and, ultimately, early road failure.

Hesp, who has been investigating the science of asphalt in his analytical lab in Kingston for 25 years, said municipalities that select the lowest cost bid on road contracts shouldn't always expect the best results on a long-term basis, and councils need to get up to speed on what's going into their asphalt cement.

"Five years is a long time for a municipality. Politicians don't think that far ahead. But for the road managers, it catches up with them because everything looks like absolute garbage."

In his Queen's asphalt lab, zinc and other metals can be detected in pavement samples, indicating the presence of used engine oil.

"We've found motor oil in about 50 per cent of asphalt cement in Ontario, and that is the cause of massive amounts of failure. It probably takes off five to 10 years of a life cycle of road."

He indicates Ontario suppliers add 10 to 20 per cent waste engine oil residue to their asphalt cement.

Hesp delivered a presentation to Timmins City Council in late April on the asphalt studies he's been jointly conducting with the Ontario Ministry of Transportation (MTO) since 2003 on Highway 655, running between Timmins and Cochrane.

In various test patches, they've experimented with different additives and compositions under extreme cold weather temperatures. On one section, polyethylene tere phthalate (PET) fibres--recycled pop bottles--were added to the asphalt.

"It's eight years old and it looks like new," declared Hesp.

Typically, road pavement consists of 95 per cent aggregate and five per cent liquid asphalt that serves as a binding agent.

Hesp said in the late 1990s, Ontario's adoption of the Superpave (Superior Performing Asphalt Pavement) method for highway construction resulted in "gel-type" binders being introduced through waxes, acids and recycled engine oil; the latter he calls the "scourge of the industry."

Hesp contends that using lubricants as a binding agent to an adhesive--like road aggregate --won't...

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