Utilizing of polyethylene and plastic wastes for paving asphalt modification in Jordan

As the number of world’s population continues to increase, the amount of solid waste that people produce is increased. Definitely, disposable products required high engineering technology. Solid waste varies such as plastics, soda cans, polyethylene bags plastics or bottles of water…etc., but the accumulation of these products has led to increasing amounts of plastic pollution around the world. As plastic is composed of major toxic pollutants, it has the potential to cause great harm to the environment. This research will be focused on utilization of polyethylene and plastic wastes for asphalt bitumen modification. Procedures are aimed to determine of optimum asphalt content of pure bitumen asphalt and concerned on tested the asphalt samples prepared with different percentages of polyethylene and waste plastic as an additives to pure asphalt with the following percentages of (2%, 3%, 4%, 5%, and 6%). The physical properties of the prepared specimens were tested for their stabilities, specific gravities, flows and air void ratios according to Marshal Method procedures. It was founded that the optimum asphalt content (OAC) is (7%) of the weight of specimens for pure asphalt samples. While the optimum values of additives to asphalt content were found as (4.1%) and (4.6%) for polyethylene and waste plastics, respectively. Results shown that for pure asphalt sample, the stability is (1367 kg), specific gravity is (Gmb) (2.182), the flow is 11.9 and the voids ratio is (3.89). Hot mixed asphalt with polyethylene additives gives that the following results of (1817 kg), (2.270), (10.4) and (4.3%) for the properties of stability, specific gravity, flow and voids ratio, respectively. on the other hand asphalt with waste plastic additives gives the results as follows (1745 kg), (2.257) and (10.2) and (5.1%) for the properties of stability, specific gravity, flow and voids ratio, respectively. It was concluded that a significant modifications in Marshal Properties of the tested control samples were achieved. In addition, the recycling of polyethylene waste and waste plastic for paving asphalt mixtures helps alleviate an environmental problem and saves energy and costs.