Recently, on the Pavement Materials and Road Maintenance Technology Forum, Huang Songchang, the deputy chief engineer of Research Institute of Highway, made an analysis of the warm mix technology of foam asphalt.

He said that, the warm mix of foam asphalt begins from 2005 in China, by researching the international warm mix technology, we put the research emphasis on the warm mix based on surface activity platform and the one with organic additives. By the year 2011, there were more than 10 provinces and cities constructing more than 100 roads, trunk lines and other application projects, the total mileage exceeds 350 miles. Compared with other asphalt mixing technologies, Mr. Huang thinks that the warm mix has more advantages: without losing the original pavement performance, the mixing temperature can be lowered to 110℃-130℃, while the rolling temperature can reach to 80℃-110℃; the batching, mixing and construction technology of the asphalt mixture are basically the same with hot mix tech; excellent adaptability: different aggregates, grades and bitumen; save the combustion cost by 20~30%; with all these characteristics, it can make asphalt for each structural layer of the roads, especially the thin overlay and super thin overlay. Besides, it’s suitable for tunnel way surfaces, regenerated mixture with large ratio of used materials, and other projects under lower temperature.

He took a brave guess that the warm mix technology is the direct of future research, because it’s the demands of “energy conservation and emission reduction” and “green development”.