Loading…
CSIR-Central Road Research Institute (CSIR-CRRI), Oriental Structural Engineers Private Limited (OSEPL) and Ooms Polymer Modified Bitumen Pvt. Ltd. demonstrated the use of 60 per cent Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement (RAP) in the Dense Bituminous Macadam (DBM) layer on National Highway-716, Chennai-Tirupati Package-I.
The demonstration covered the full recycling chain under live highway conditions — RAP recovery and processing, material characterisation, rejuvenation, mix design, hot-mix plant production, laying and field compaction — and was attended by NHAI and Government of Tamil Nadu officials.
It featured REJUBIT, an indigenous RAP rejuvenator jointly developed by CSIR-CRRI and Ooms India that restores properties of the aged bitumen in reclaimed asphalt, allowing a higher share of old pavement material in new mixes.
When an old bituminous road is milled, what comes off is not waste: it is graded aggregate coated in bitumen that has hardened with age and oxidation. That material is Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement. It can be recovered, characterised, rejuvenated to restore the aged binder's properties, and blended back into a new hot mix. Dense Bituminous Macadam is the dense-graded binder course that sits below the Bituminous Concrete wearing course in a flexible pavement and carries the structural load, distributing traffic stresses to the granular layers beneath it. Using 60 per cent RAP in that layer means most of the material in the structural course comes from the road that was already there — cutting demand for virgin aggregate and for bitumen, of which India imports a substantial quantity.
Simple Analogy: It is the difference between throwing away an old woollen sweater and unravelling it: the yarn is still good, it just needs conditioning before it can be knitted into something new.
National laboratory for research and development in the design, construction, maintenance and management of roads and airport runways; provided the technical guidance for the trial and co-developed REJUBIT
India's largest publicly funded R&D organisation, the parent body of CRRI, running a network of national laboratories across disciplines
Develops, maintains and manages the national highways entrusted to it; its officials attended the demonstration, and adoption of high-RAP mixes on NHAI projects is the pathway to scale
The Tamil Nadu state highway research body, whose Director was Chief Guest and flagged the state's road network as a large potential source of recyclable pavement material
GS Paper 3 > Science and Technology > Indigenisation; Environment > Circular Economy
General Awareness > Scientific Institutions
General Awareness > Science and Infrastructure
Infrastructure and Technology
In the context of which one of the following are the terms 'pyrolysis and plasma gasification' mentioned?
Answer: Waste-to-energy technologies
CSIR laboratories and their locations are a recurring SSC and railway general awareness item; circular-economy applications appear in UPSC environment questions.
Milled material from an existing bituminous road, containing recoverable aggregate and aged bitumen that can be rejuvenated and reused in new mixes.
An indigenous RAP rejuvenator jointly developed by CSIR-CRRI and Ooms India to restore key properties of aged bitumen.
The dense-graded bituminous binder course laid below the wearing course in a flexible pavement; it carries and distributes the structural load.
An economic model that keeps materials in use rather than discarding them, here by treating an existing highway as a resource bank for the next one.