Assessment of sugar cane bagasse bio-oil as an environmental friendly alternative for pavement engineering applications

Due to the depletion of conventional asphalt binder resources and price hiking, researchers are focused on introducing environmental friendly and sustainable materials as a replacement to the conventional binder. On the other hand, the production of a large quantity of sugarcane bagasse (SCB) leads to severe environmental problems. Therefore, effective utilisation of SCB bio-oil as a replacement to conventional binder can help in reducing the aforementioned problems. In this study, the conventional binder and mixture were modified at 5% and 10% SCB bio-oil. The rheological behaviour of the modified binder was analysed using conventional tests and dynamic shear rheometer. The performance of asphalt mixtures was then evaluated using dynamic modulus, cooper wheel tracker and four point beam fatigue test. The ability of modified mixtures against moisture damage was also assessed. The results indicate that the 10% SCB bio-oil sample possessed better fatigue resistance among all samples with insignificant effect on rutting resistance. Further, the SCB bio-oil negatively influenced moisture resistance of modified mixtures. So it can be concluded that SCB bio-oil can potentially be used to modify conventional binder and mixture. However, there is a need to improve the moisture resistance of SCB bio-oil modified binder.