Journal of Cleaner Production 190 (2018) 251e260

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Journal of Cleaner Production

journal home page: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro

Towards 90% warm re-use of porous asphalt using foaming technology

J. Qiu*, M. Huurman, B. de Bruin, E.W. Demmink, M.H.T. Frunt
BAM Infra Asphalt, Royal BAM Group, Plantijnweg 32, 4104 BB, Culemborg, The Netherlands

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The growing needs for sustainability demand that porous asphalt (PA), one of the most critical types of
Received 15 October 2017 asphalt mixtures, can be produced with high quality, low production temperature and using high per-
Received in revised form centages of reclaimed materials. With the support of the European Lifeþ program, a new decomposition
29 March 2018
technique was developed to decompose the reclaimed PA into the mortar sand (grain size  2 mm,
Accepted 10 April 2018
bitumen content 10e14%) and the reclaimed stones in various fractions (bitumen content less than 1%).
Available online 10 April 2018
The reclaimed mortar sand can then be rejuvenated, enriched and homogenized to obtain a high quality
mortar. When this mortar is mixed with the reclaimed stones, a high quality PA can be obtained with
Keywords:
Porous asphalt
almost 95% reclaimed materials. This paper discusses the influence of different production techniques on
LE2AP the performances of this mixture. These techniques include (A) conventional hot production technique at
Lifeþ 170 C, (B) the cold feed of reclaimed mortar sand in combination with bitumen foaming obtaining a mix
Foaming at 105  C and (C) the hot production of mortar in combination with the newly developed mortar foaming
Recycling method to obtain a mixture at 105  C. Laboratory results indicate that the PA may be produced at 105 C,
Sustainability containing up to 93% reclaimed materials and having a high quality.
© 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction percentages of reclaimed materials. With the initiatives of gov-

Porous Asphalt, PA, is widely used in the Netherlands as
surfacing layers because of its noise reducing properties. Single
layer porous asphalt has an average service life of 11e12 years on
the slow lane of Dutch motorways (Huurman et al., 2010). At the
end of its service life the PA surfacing layer is milled off and
replaced by the new PA. Generally the new PA does not contain
reclaimed asphalt, however in limited cases up to 30% of reclaimed
asphalt is used. The reclaimed PA is generally re-used in the layers
below the surface layer. In essence PA is thus not re-cycled but
down-cycled. The reclaimed PA most often contains high quality
aggregates and aged bitumen with penetration in range of
5e20 dmm. The high quality PA aggregates, mostly with high polish
stone values (PSV) to guaranty skid resistance over a prolonged
period of time, in current procedures are misused in layers where
PSV values are not of interest.
The growing needs for sustainability demands that porous
asphalt, one of the most critical types of asphalt, can be produced
with high quality, low production temperature and using high
* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: jian.qiu@bam.com, j.rz.qiu@gmail.com (J. Qiu), rien.
huurman@bam.com (M. Huurman), bastiaan.de.bruin@bam.com (B. de Bruin),
ernst.demmink@bam.com (E.W. Demmink), mark.frunt@bam.com (M.H.T. Frunt).
ernment and industries, trials have been carried out to analyze the
possibilities of reusing more than 30% reclaimed PA into hot pro-
duced PA or SMAs (Nicholls et al., 2008; van de Wall and Bosch
2008). Dutch construction company van Gelder has also con-
structed a test trial on Dutch motorway A27 with hot produced PA
with up to 50% reclaimed PA and polymer modified bitumen.
Hosokawa et al. reported a process of hot in-place recycling of PA
with a recycling percentage up to 60% in Japan (Hosokawa et al.,
2005). Pratico et al. reported a field trial in Italy by using up to
82% reclaimed PA in constructing a new double layer PA mixtures
with the help of rejuvenators (Pratico et al., 2014). However, from
the literature studies it can be concluded that due to the high
variabilities of the reclaimed PA, for example, in gradation, the
variabilities of the total quality of the realized products are also
increased, especially with the use of high percentage of reclaimed
PA. In addition, a so called layered system between the new
bitumen and the old bitumen on the reclaimed PA is also present
(Huang et al., 2005; Qiu et al., 2015; Nahar et al., 2013: Karlsson and
Isacsson, 2003). It is thus necessary to reconsider the reusing of
porous asphalt in a systematic way to guaranty both recycling
percentage and quality.
In 2013, under a grant of the European Lifeþ program, an
innovative way of horizontal recycling of porous asphalt has been
developed. Under the project named “Low Emission 2 Asphalt
Pavement (LE2AP)”, the reclaimed porous asphalt were proposed to

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.04.086
0959-6526/© 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
252 J. Qiu et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 190 (2018) 251e260

be reused in terms of its original components at a high percentage,

with a low production temperature and a high quality (Huurman
et al., 2016). In the LE2AP approach (Fig. 1), the reclaimed porous
asphalt passes at first through a rotary decomposition device and is
separated into reclaimed aggregates with a small amount of
bitumen and a bitumen-rich mortar (sand-filler-bitumen system).
The reclaimed aggregates, called PA-stone, can be reused as high
quality aggregates without further treatment. The reclaimed
mortar is then treated and homogenized before it is reused as
mortar for a new mixture. With a special mortar foaming tech-
nology, the treated mortar is foamed and mixed with the well-
fractionized PA-stone. As a result, high quality warm produced
porous asphalt containing a high percentage of reclaimed material
can be produced. In September and October 2016, a total of 2.3 km
double layer noise reducing PA was installed in two Dutch pro-
vincial roads to demonstrate the feasibility of the LE2AP technol-
ogy. The installation in both cases comprised above 80% re-use, and
in both cases the temperature of the PA at the screed of the paver
was about 105  C.
In this paper, the possibilities of re-using porous asphalt ac-
cording to the LE2AP approach were investigated through labora-
tory research. Porous asphalt containing 93% reclaimed materials
was designed through multi-level mixture designs including
mortar design and mixture design. The designed porous asphalt are
then produced with different production techniques, including (A)
conventional hot production at 170  C, (B) the cold feed of
reclaimed mortar sand in combination with bitumen foaming
obtaining a mix at 105  C and (C) the hot production of mortar in
combination with the newly developed mortar foaming technique
to obtain a mixture at 105  C. The performance of the produced
porous asphalt mixtures was evaluated through Dynamic Shear
Rheometer at the mortar level and Indirect Tension Test at the
mixture level, respectively.

2. Materials and methods

Fig. 2. Illustration of reclaimed mortar sand (upper) and reclaimed aggregates (lower).
2.1. Materials

Fig. 2 and Table 1 illustrate the materials obtained after the

Reclaimed PA

Decomposition

PA-stone 8/16 mm, Mortar sand Visco us fluid design

PA-stone 5/8 mm 0/2 mm Mortar design

LE2AP mortar

Mortar production
Mortar foaming

Foamed LE2AP mortar

LE2AP mixture
(80% reclaimed materials,
produced at 110-110°C)

Fig. 1. Illustration of the LE2AP PA recycling process.

 J. Qiu et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 190 (2018) 251e260 253

Table 1
Descriptions of materials obtained after decompositions of reclaimed porous asphalt.

Gradations passing sieves 24 mm 16 mm 8 mm 5.6 mm 2 mm 0.063 mm Bitumen percentage

Reclaimed mortar sand [%] 100 100 100 100 97.4 24.0 10.5
PA-stone 5/8 mm [%] 100 100 81.5 9.4 4.2 2.6 1.1
PA-stone 8/16 mm [%] 100 99.5 10.2 3.0 2.6 1.2 1.0
Reclaimed PA [%] 100 99 52.9 35.7 23.2 8.0 4.2
Crushed stone 11/16 mm [%] 100 88.5 3.5 2.4 1.1 0.4

rotary decomposition process. The mechanisms of the rotary
decomposition process can be found elsewhere in the literature
(Huurman et al., 2016). The products obtained after the process are
discussed hereafter and used as raw materials in this research. The
bitumen-rich mortar contains about 10.5% bitumen by weight and
the reclaimed aggregates (hereafter, PA-stone) contain about 1%
bitumen by weight. When comparing the obtained PA-stone with
the reclaimed PA and the normally used crushed stone shown in
Table 1, the gradation of the produced PA-stone is clearly close to a
stone fraction rather than a reclaimed PA. As such, the variation in
gradation, especially for fine particles can be well controlled.
Table 2 gives the recipe of the LE2AP mortar and its fresh
equivalent. The mortar contains sand, filler and bitumen, which is
the binding agent of the porous asphalt. The LE2AP mortar is
designed such that the bitumen content and the bitumen pene-
tration are similar to that of the fresh mortar. The designed LE2AP
mortar contains 82.9% reclaimed mortar sand, new bitumen and
rejuvenator. The rate of application is controlled by the log-pen
blending law of bitumen. The expected penetration of the
blended bitumen in the LE2AP mortar is 89 (0.1 mm), which is
identical to that of the fresh bitumen in the fresh PA mortar.
Table 3 presents the compositions of the designed mixtures. It
has to be noted that, part of remaining bitumen on the PA-stone is
also taken into account during the mix design as bitumen content.
It is assumed arbitrarily that 25% of the bitumen in or on the PA-
stone is acting as black rock and cannot be reactivated. The other
75% of the bitumen on/in the PA-stone is active in the new mixture.
This bitumen may either be reactivated or has penetrated the stone
as pre-coating which binds the stone and the LE2AP mortar into the
stone. The percentage of activation is arbitrarily selected. Further
research is ongoing to refine it further.
2.2. Methods
2.2.1. Bitumen foaming method
As shown in Fig. 3, in order to be able to produce the designed
LE2AP PA mixture at a relative lower production temperature, for
example around 105  C, two types of developed foaming
technologies were used in the lab scale, namely the bitumen
foaming method and the mortar foaming method.
The principle of the using foamed bitumen was developed in the
1950s. When hot bitumen and water meet each other, a bitumen
foam can be created with a very large expansion in volume at a
temperature around 100e110  C. This principle allows the binders
to coat the warm mineral aggregates effectively and to produce a
half-warm/warm asphalt mixture. The authors of this paper have
developed the LEAB (Dutch acronym for Low Energy Asphalt Con-
crete) technology based on this principle. The LEAB foaming tech-
nology can be used to produce high quality asphalt mixtures at
90e110  C, which have the same composition and performance
characteristics as their hot mix equivalents produced around
150e170  C. The LEAB technology has been successfully applied in
practices for more than 10 years with more than 500,000 ton LEAB
asphalt mixtures produced and applied in about 200 Dutch road
construction projects including motorways, provincial roads and
streets (Jacobs et al., 2010).
The bitumen foaming unit includes the control unit, kettle unit,
pumping unit and the foaming unit. The hot bitumen are first filled
in the kettle unit with electrical heating, together with the
pumping unit creates the hot bitumen a constant circulation.
During foaming, the foaming unit is activated to generate both hot
bitumen and high-pressure water into a small chamber and to be
dosed into the mixer.
2.2.2. Mortar foaming method
The mortar foaming technology was specially developed under
the European Lifeþ project LE2AP. In this technology, the reclaimed
mortar is rejuvenated and enriched by rejuvenators together with
soft bitumen to obtain a binding mortar for the new porous asphalt
at a temperature of 170  C with a bitumen content of around
25e30% by mass. Afterwards this mortar, the LE2AP mortar, can be
produced and foamed with a special designed unit as shown in
Fig. 3.
The structure of the mortar foaming unit is similar to that of the
bitumen foaming unit, including the control unit, kettle unit,
pumping unit and the foaming unit. This unit is designed by

Table 2
Descriptions of mortar compositions.

Reclaimed mortar Crushed Filler [%] 70/100 pen Rejuvenator [%] Total bitumen Percentage reclaimed Expected
sand [%] sand [%] bitumen [%] content [%] materials [%] penetration
[0.1 mm]

LE2AP Mortar 82.9 e e 16.2 0.9 25.8 82.9 89

Fresh PA mortar e 52.4 21.9 25.7 e 25.7 0 89

Table 3
Descriptions of mixture compositions.

PA-stone 8/16 [%] PA-stone 5/8 [%] Virgin stone 5/8 [%] LE2AP Mortar [%] Bitumen content [%] Percentage recycling [%]

LE2AP PA 0/16 57.3 23.1 4.8 14.8 4.4 93

Fresh PA 0/16 e e e e 4.4 0
254 J. Qiu et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 190 (2018) 251e260

Foaming unit

Control unit

Kettle unit

Pumping unit

Foaming unit

Kettle unit

Pumping unit

Control unit

Fig. 3. Bitumen foaming apparatus (upper) and mortar foaming apparatus (lower).

considering both the bitumen foaming principle and the influence
of the sand and filler particles in the mortar. The hot mortar is first
produced in the kettle unit per receipt, together with the pumping
unit creates a constant circulation for homogeneity. During foam-
ing, the foaming unit is activated to generate both hot mortar and
high-pressure water into a dosing arm and to be dosed into the
mixer.
2.2.3. Test plan
As it is shown in Table 4, three main production methods of the
LE2AP PA mixtures were investigated in this research.
(A) Hot production: LE2AP mortar was first produced by mixing
mortar sand, soft bitumen and rejuvenator together. Then
the LE2AP mortar was mixed with the hot PA-stone without
foaming action.
(B) Mortar foaming: LE2AP mortar was first produced by mix-
ing mortar sand, soft bitumen and rejuvenator together.
Then the LE2AP mortar was foamed with the mortar foaming
unit and mixed with the pre-heated PA-stone.
(C) Bitumen foaming: The mortar sand was pre-blended with
the rejuvenator. Then the mortar sand was mixed with the
pre-heated PA-stone. At the same time, the required new
bitumen was added by the bitumen foaming unit.
By the use of mortar foaming technology, the expected mixture
temperature is almost the same as the preheating temperature of
the PA-stone. By the use of the bitumen foaming and cold dosing
technology, the preheating temperature of the PA-stone has to be
increased by 20  C to be able to produce at the same mixture
temperature of the mortar foaming technology.
Investigations were carried out through mortar performance,
bitumen/mortar foaming performance and mixture performance.
The mortar performance was investigated using the Dynamic Shear
Rheometer (DSR) as shown in Fig. 4. The tests were conducted with
a special mortar column setup with a height of 20 mm and a
diameter of 6 mm (Huurman et al., 2010). The foaming performance
was evaluated with both expansion and half-life parameters. The
mixture performance was investigated using the indirect tension
test according to NEN-EN 13108-20. Both the dry and the wet
groups (specimens were retained around 72 h at 40  C) were

Table 4
Descriptions of production methods.

Hot production Mortar foaming Bitumen foaming Fresh PA

PA-stone production 170  C 130 and 100 C 130 C e

Mortar production method Homogenized Homogenized and foamed Mortar cold dosed e
Foaming No Mortar foaming Bitumen foaming No
Expected mixture temperature 170  C 128  C and 103  C 109 C 170  C
Percentage recycling 93% 93% 93% 0%
 J. Qiu et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 190 (2018) 251e260 255

Fig. 4. DSR test on mortar columns.

subjected to an indirect tension loading with a loading speed of content and without special gradation correction.
50 mm/min at a temperature of 15  C.

3.2. Bitumen/mortar foaming performance

3. Results and discussions
3.1. Mortar performance
In mortar design phase, the LE2AP mortar is designed by ho-
mogenizing and enriching the reclaimed mortar sand with re-
juvenators and soft bitumen by variating its bitumen properties
and compositions. The bitumen properties have been controlled by
the log-pen relation of the bitumen. Further attention is paid to the
composition of the mortar. As it is shown in Table 5, the solid
gradation (sand/filler content ratio) in the LE2AP mortar, which
were obtained from the reclaimed mortar, are not the same as the
fresh porous asphalt. As a result, two compensation scenarios have
been used being filler correction and full correction as shown in
Table 5.
Fig. 5 presents the complex modulus and phase angle master
curves of the above described mortars with and without gradation
correction. The presented master curves are made at a reference
temperature of 20  C. The results clearly indicate that LE2AP mor-
tars produced based on reclaimed mortar has similar rheological
properties than a freshly produced mortar. In addition, the grada-
tion corrections are not necessary by producing a porous asphalt
mortar in this research. It is thus concluded that the LE2AP mortar
can be produced with identical bitumen penetration and bitumen
The bitumen foaming and the mortar foaming product were
produced by laboratory foaming units as shown in Fig. 3. During the
foaming process, an additive was used to improve the quality of the
foam, which is about 0.17% for the bitumen foam and 0.4% for the
mortar foam (based on the weight of bitumen). During the foaming
experiment, it is observed that the temperature of the foamed
bitumen is around 100  C and the temperature of the foamed
mortar is around 110e120  C. The higher temperature of the mortar
foaming might be due to the presence of the sand and filler parti-
cles in the mortar, which remain at a higher temperature when
contacting with water. It is important to note that no segregation of
the sand and filler was observed during foaming process of the
mortar.
Fig. 6 illustrates a foaming process with several indicators such
as maximum expansion and half-life. The foam index is the area
under the expansion-time curve, which is another measure of a
combination of expansion and half-life.
Fig. 7 compares the half-life and expansion of mortar foaming
and bitumen foaming. By increasing the water content, the
expansion of the foaming properties increases and the half-life of
the foaming decreases. This observation applies to both foaming
products. The average expansion factor of the bitumen foaming is
about 20 and the half-life is about 100s. The expansion factor of the

Table 5
Mortar compositions with and without correction.

Fresh PA LE2AP mortar full grading LE2AP mortar filler grading LE2AP mortar no grading
mortar correction correction correction

sand 0.5e2 mm 32% 31% 23% 25%

sand 0.063e0.5 mm 21% 21% 29% 32%
less than 0.063 mm 22% 22% 22% 18%
Bitumen percentage 26% 26% 26% 26%
Percentage of reclaimed materials in the 0% 51.2% 74.6% 81.3%
mortar
256 J. Qiu et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 190 (2018) 251e260

1,E+10

1,E+09

1,E+08

1,E+07
G* [Pa]

1,E+06
Fresh PA 0/16 mortar
1,E+05 LE2AP mortar no correction
LE2AP mortar filler correction
1,E+04
LE2AP mortar filler/sand correction
1,E+03
1,E-05 1,E-03 1,E-01 1,E+01 1,E+03 1,E+05 1,E+0 7
Reduced frequency @20°C [ rad /s ]

90

60
Phase angle [° ]

30 Fresh PA 0/16 mortar

LE2AP mortar no correction
LE2AP mortar filler correction
LE2AP mortar filler/sand correction
0
1,E-05 1,E-03 1,E-01 1,E+01 1,E+03 1,E+05 1,E+07
Reduced frequenc y @ 20°C [ rad /s ]
Fig. 5. Mastercurves of different types of LE2AP mortars, (upper) complex modulus; (lower) phase angle at a reference temperature of 20  C (the curves of the LE2AP variants
overlap with each other).

Max. expansion ratio obtained mortar foaming may reach a value of 10 and the half-life is
above 200s. The half-time of mortar foam thus is even longer than
the half-life of the bitumen foam. This might be due to the presence
Foaming index = of the sand and filler in the mortar foam (Qiu et al., 2016). Based on
area expansion vs. half-life
Expansion [-]

the results from the expansion and half-life, the foam index is
calculated. A higher foam index indicates a better workability of the
foaming product. The result shows that at a water content of 1.5%,
the foam index of the mortar foaming approaches the maximum,
whereas the optimal water content for the bitumen foaming is
around 2.5%.

Time [s] 3.3. Mixture performance

Half-life = time to reach
half max. expansion ratio
Fig. 8 gives the results of the mixture performances. The
Fig. 6. Illustration of foaming process. following can be observed:
 J. Qiu et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 190 (2018) 251e260 257

30

25 LEAB bitumen foaming

LE2AP mortar foaming
20

Expansion ratio [-]

15

10

0
0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5 3,0 3,5

Water content [%]

600
LEAB bitumen foaming
LE2AP mortar foaming
500

400
Half-lief [s]

300

200

100

0
0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5 3,0 3,5

Water content [%]

2500
LEAB bitumen foaming
LE2AP mortar foaming
2000

1500
Foam index

1000

500

0
0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5 3,0 3, 5

Water content [%]

Fig. 7. Comparison of expansion ratio of bitumen foaming and mortar foaming (upper); half-life of both technology (middle) and foam index of both technology (lower).
258 J. Qiu et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 190 (2018) 251e260

110
1,4

100
1,2
ITS control[MPa]

90

ITSR[%]
1
80
Hot prod uctio n method Hot productio n method
0,8 Mortar foam method 130C Mortar foam metho d 130C
70
Mortar foam method 100C Mortar foam metho d 100C
Bitumen foam method Bitumen foam method
0,6 60
50 100 150 200 50 100 150 200
Tmixture [°C] Tmixture [°C]

(a) (b)

1,60 1,00

1,40 0,80
Fracture energy[MPa.mm]

Stiffness[MPa/mm]
1,20 0,60

1,00 0,40
Hot productio n method
Hot productio n method
Mortar foam method 130C
Mortar foam metho d 130C 0,20
0,80 Mortar foam method 100C
Mortar foam metho d 100C
Bitumen foam method Bitumen foam method
0,60 0,00
50 100 150 200 50 100 150 200
Tmixture [°C] Tmixture [°C]

(c) (d)
Fig. 8. Indirect tension results of produced mixtures made by different mixing methods. (Tmixture is the temperature of different produced mixtures.)

1) It can be observed in Fig. 8a that with a decrease of the pro- And all the production methods are higher than the minimal
duction temperature, the strength of the specimen decreases requirement of 80%.
and the ultimate displacement increases. The indirect tension
strength is thought to be an indication of the cohesive perfor-
4. Trial applications
mance of the mixtures. The drop of the strength can be
explained by two reasons, the reduction of ageing during the
Two LE2AP trial sections of in total 2.3 km have been paved on
process of low temperature production and the presence of a
Dutch provincial roads N279 (24, 25 September 2016) and N338 (1
layered system.
October 2016) as shown in Fig. 9. The N279 connects the A2 near
2) It can be observed in Fig. 8b that the bitumen foam method has a
the city of Den Bosch to the city of Roermond. The test section of
relative low stiffness value. In the bitumen foam method, the
N279 is located near the city of Veghel, has a length of 1300 m and
mortar (either cold or warm) was added to the mixture together
is part of a dual carriage way with 2  2 lanes. Traffic intensity is
with the foamed bitumen. Theoretically, the foamed bitumen
24,000 vehicles per working day. The N338 connects the A12
cannot be 100% blended and reacted with the cold/warm mortar
motorway near city of Arnhem to the N317 close to the town of
at a temperature of 109  C. As a result, the mixtures made by the
Doesburg. The test section of N338 is a dual lane, single carriage-
foamed bitumen and the cold/warm mortar contain a layered
way. In 2009 the N338 near Doesburg was trafficked by 11,000
system (Qiu et al., 2015). This phenomenon is not present in the
vehicles per day.
hot production method and the mortar foam method.
As shown in Table 6, these test sections were designed with
3) The fracture energies are almost the same for different types of
two-layer porous asphalt, which consists of 25 mm PA 5/8 top layer
production method and has no direct relation with the pro-
and 45 mm PA 8/16 bottom layer with a maximum recycling per-
duction temperature.
centage up to 92%. Both bitumen foaming and mortar foaming
4) The ITSR value gives an indication of the loss of the material
methods were applied in the sections, and the bitumen foaming
strength due to the influence of the water. It can be observed
method was applied with fresh sand and filler without the cold
that the hot production method has a relative high ITSR value.
dosing of reclaimed mortar (Huurman et al., 2018). The test trials
 J. Qiu et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 190 (2018) 251e260 259

2010/70, >0.47), a water sensitivity ITSR of 84e89% for the bottom

layer (NEN-EN 13108-20, >80%) and a sufficient raveling resistance
for the top layer (ARTe raveling test, prCEN-TS 12697-50:2014).

5. Conclusions

Based on the research efforts during the LE2AP project - from

bitumen level research to production and installation of test sec-
tions, the following conclusions can be drawn:

1) In the developed LE2AP technology, the reclaimed materials are

Fig. 9. LE2AP trial application sections at Dutch provincial roads N338 (upper) and
N279 (lower).
were installed with a mixture temperature of about 105  C.
The field data in Table 7 shows that the test section has a noise
reduction of up to 8.4 dB (SPB, standard 2-layer porous asphalt
is 6.3 dB), a friction coefficient of up to 0.76 (RAW 2010 test 72
first to be decomposed to their original components, the
bitumen-rich reclaimed mortar sand (bitumen content 10e15%)
and the bitumen-poor reclaimed aggregates (bitumen content
<1%) and further to be used in designing new (warm produced)
asphalt mixtures. This method can be used for producing
asphalt mixtures with high recycling percentage, high quality
and low production temperature.
2) It was found that the bitumen content and quality in the LE2AP
porous asphalt mortar (sand-filler-bitumen system) dominate
the mortar performance. The influence of the solid fraction on
the mortar performance is negligible. It is expected that this is
due to the high bitumen content of tested PA mortars and due to
the fact that the solids in reclaimed mortar are as per initial PA
mixture recipe.
3) The LE2AP porous asphalts, which contain 93% reclaimed ma-
terials, can be produced as low as 105  C with the help of either
the bitumen foaming method or the mortar foaming method,
and have good performances in terms of strength, stiffness and
water sensitivity.
4) The test sections were constructed in September/October 2016.
The test sections consist of 2-layer PA with 8.3e8.4 dB(A) initial
noise reduction. The reclaimed materials that were used in the
test sections were obtained from decomposition of a reclaimed
single layer PA. The field trials of the LE2AP porous asphalt
indicate the potential of producing high quality low tempera-
ture porous asphalt in practice with maximum 93% recycling. By
monitoring, their future performances will be determined so
that final conclusions with respect to the quality of LE2AP
asphalt may be drawn in the future.
5) The re-use of PA-stone in the LE2AP concept can be used for
recycling of porous asphalt mixtures percentage up to 80% with
equivalent performance as the fresh made mixtures. With the

Table 6
Description of asphalt mixtures used in the test sections.

Mixture Description Production Percentage re-use

A 2L-PA 5/8 top layer comprising reclaimed stone and fresh mortar Foamed bitumen, temperature at screed 100e110  C. 82%
with Panacea fibre.
B 2L-PA 8/16 bottom layer comprising reclaimed stone and reclaimed Foamed mortar, temperature at screed 100e110 C. 92%
and treated mortar.
C 2L-PA 8/16 bottom layer comprising reclaimed stone and fresh Foamed bitumen, temperature at screed 100e110  C. 82%
mortar.

Table 7
Field data of the two test sections.

N338 N279 Standard 2L-PA

2L-PA structure 25 mm Aþ 45 mm C 25 mm Aþ 45 mm B 25 mm Aþ 45 mm C 25 mm top layerþ 45 mm bottom layer

Total percentage recycling 82% 90% 82%
Initial noise reduction, SPB [dB(A)] 8.4 8.2 8.3 6.3
Skid resistance friction per 100 m 0.76 0.67 >0.47
sections at 50 km/h [-]
ITSR bottom layers [%] 81 (mixture C) 89 (mixture B) 87 (mixture C) >80
260 J. Qiu et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 190 (2018) 251e260

help of both bitumen foaming and mortar foaming technologies,
these high recycling percentage (above 80%) mixtures can also
be produced at a low production temperature as 105  C with
good performance.
6) The re-use of the reclaimed mortar sand in the LE2AP concept,
together with the re-use of the PA-stone, provides possibilities
of producing porous asphalt mixtures with up to 90% recycling.
With the help of both bitumen foaming and mortar foaming
technologies, these mixtures can be produced at a low pro-
duction temperature as 105 C with good performance. Due to
the advantage of homogeneity and extra quality control of the
mortar foaming method, this method is recommended to be
used for producing asfalt mixtures with a recycling percentage
above 90%.
Acknowledgements
The financial support from the European
LIFEþ program is gratefully acknowledged.
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