Life cycle assessment of asphalt pavement product

Abstract

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) can be used to quantify the environmental impacts of materials, processes, products or systems during their entire lifetime from creation to disposal. The objective of the present study was to examine and compare the environmental impacts of different asphalt products by means of LCA. The functional unit selected was one ton asphalt production. The comparative LCA was performed using LCA software SimaPro® with Impact2002+ database. The guidelines from ISO 14040:2006 was used throughout the analyses. Results from the software underline the estimated environmental performance of asphalt production in terms of a number of choices such as carbon footprint, resource and energy consumptions and various environmental impacts. According to the comparisons, between three different types of asphalt products, it was found that average 10% decrease of environmental effects can be achieved when the less bitumen was used in the asphalt production. At the same time carbon emission was also 5% higher in the binder type asphalt production where bitumen needs to keep warm. Therefore it can be said that LCA can provide a useful comparison between products and helpful in decision making. © 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.