Study on the deteriorations of bituminous binder resulted from volatile organic compounds emissions

Bituminous materials can produce volatile organic compounds (VOC) in environmental condition during its service life. Higher ambient temperature and stronger ultraviolet could promote the release of VOC. Such VOC emission process not only is not environmental friendly, but also leads to the deterioration of its performance and hence reducing the life expectancy of bituminous binder. In this research, the degradation properties because of VOC emission process in bituminous binder was investigated, as well as the possibility of using additives to decrease the amount of VOC emission. Properties of bituminous binder before and after conditioned in ultraviolet condition were investigated and the differences were studied. Results indicate that VOC emission mainly happened at the beginning stage. VOC emission process would lead to lower penetration value, higher soften point and will result in the decrease of aromatics content and saturates content. Significant increase of modulus and decrease of phase angle can be observed because of VOC emission. Adding Layer double hydroxides into bituminous binder can prevent the binder from property deterioration resulted from VOC emission. Master curves of complex shear modulus and phase angle shows that the Layer double hydroxides modified bituminous binder has very limited value changes resulted from VOC emission. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.