Development of a novel binder rejuvenator composed by waste cooking oil and crumb tire rubber

Abstract In order to improve the performance of recycled mixture containing reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP), it is usually necessary to add the rejuvenators. Waste cooking oil (WCO) has been used to rejuvenate recycled binder materials, and some studies have proposed adding virgin polymers to improve fatigue performance of recycled mixture. The output of crumb tire rubber (CTR) is large and the price of it is cheap. However, the compatibility between CTR and the aged binder is poor. In this paper, the CTR was mixed with WCO for pre-desulfurization to prepare the waste rubber/oil (WRO) rejuvenator. The high and low temperature rheological properties before or after aging of the rejuvenated binders were tested by dynamic shear rheometer (DSR) and bending beam rheometer (BBR), and the functional groups of rejuvenated binders was detected by fourier transform infrared spectrometer (FTIR). Multiple stress creep and recovery (MSCR) test was conducted to measure rutting resistance. A WCO-based rejuvenator and an aromatic oil were chosen as control groups. It was found that WRO had the potential to be used as an asphalt rejuvenator. The 70 min reaction time of the WRO rejuvenator was determined by viscosity curve and infrared spectrograms. WRO rejuvenator significantly improved the low temperature properties of aged binder, and partially retaining the high temperature properties of aged binder. With 10% WRO rejuvenator, the performance grade of the artificial aged binder was recovered from 82–16 to 70–28. After aging, the high and low temperature continuous grading of the WRO rejuvenated binder did not change much.