RE: Excellent news!6 Aug 2020 18:53
Reduces traffic noise as well
Ponte Genova San Giorgio, the beautiful story of sustainable asphalt
It is more durable and overall there is a saving of CO2 emissions in the production and maintenance of this material of 60%
[6 August 2020]
The families of the victims of the former Morandi bridge, which collapsed two years ago, are right , are right when they say that there is nothing to celebrate with respect to the reconstruction just completed. But knowing that at least things seem to have been done with attention to the environment too, is always better than nothing. This is why it is right to point out that the asphalt used for the infrastructure inaugurated a few days ago, which today is called the Genoa San Giorgio bridge, not only "resists twice as long as traditional ones", but is built with a recovery process of plastics, in a logic of circular economy.
To make it more durable, it is explained by Iterchimica, the company that produced it , an innovative additive was used that increases the performance of the asphalt, improving its ability to withstand thermal excursions and the weather, rain and Sun. A “sustainable” blend, given that, as mentioned, it also uses recycled plastic, and which is also sound-absorbing and therefore allows vehicle noise to be reduced to a minimum.
The project, Iterchimica always explains, was born almost five years ago, with the idea of ??recovering plastics that are not currently recycled but end up in the waste-to-energy cycle, launched together with the Lombardy Region and tested on some particularly critical road sections, such as the tracks. airports of Fiumicino airport.
And it was precisely this long experimentation that gave rise to the technology chosen by Webuild for the asphalt of the Genoa bridge, a product that brings together all the innovation of this sector and Webuild's propensity to use materials with a strong component of sustainability. Inside there are recycled plastics and graphene, which give the asphalt - in the conditions already tested - 250% greater resistance than traditional ones.
«Our company has two patents on this product - explains Federica Giannattasio, CEO of Iterchimica -. The first for the plastic recovery process, and the second for the final additive that is made ».
Inside the asphalt the plastics of the toys or those of the benches are recovered, all materials that before this patent were not part of the recycling chain.
"It is a sustainable project - continues Giannattasio - and the Milano-Bicocca University has calculated that, both for the recovery of plastics and for the longer life of the asphalt, there is a saving of CO2 emissions in the production and maintenance of this 60% material ".
In the Iterchimica headquarters, chemists and engineers worked in parallel, the former on materials, the latter on design. Subsequently, the right mix of asphalt was developed by the official Poliedro laboratory.
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