Transportation Engineering 13 (2023) 100185

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Transportation Engineering
journal homepage: www.sciencedirect.com/journal/transportation-engineering

Economic and environmental assessment of a green pavement recycling

solution using foamed asphalt binder based on LCA and LCCA
Hongmei Li a, Jiwang Jiang b, *, Qiang Li c
a
School of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Nanjing Institute of Technology, Nanjing 211167, Jiangsu, China
b
School of Transportation, Southeast University, Nanjing 210000, Jiangsu, China
c
Department of Civil Engineering, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing 210037, Jiangsu, China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Cold-in-place recycling with foamed asphalt binders (CIR-F) has been considered as an environmentally sus­
Pavement maintenance tainable option for asphalt pavement maintenance due to the low mixing temperature and the reuse of up to
Cold-in-place recycling 100% of existing asphalt materials. However, the quantitative assessment of its economic and environmental
Economic and environmental assessment
performance from a life cycle perspective has rarely been addressed in the literature. To fill in the gap, this study
Life cycle assessment
Life cycle cost analysis
conducted cradle-to-laid life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) to estimate the annual
energy consumption, carbon emissions, and equivalent uniform annual cost (EUAC) of CIR-F and compared it
with the traditional mill & fill (M&F). The considered life cycle stages include raw material production, con­
struction, transportation, and work zone traffic management. The heat map visualization technique was
employed to explore the influence of service life on the relative environmental and economic advantages of CIR-
F. The results show that both economic and environmental impacts of CIR-F were significantly reduced compared
to conventional M&F, with 66.45% less cost, 59.62% less energy consumption and 45.73% less carbon emissions.
Reducing the service life of CIR-F will reduce, or even completely offset, its benefits over M&F. Assuming a
service life of 15 years for conventional M&F, the service life of CIR-F needs to be greater than 8 years to
maintain its environmental advantage. The results of this study provide a quantitative assessment of the eco­
nomic and environmental benefits of CIR-F, providing evidence for its broader application.

1. Introduction widely recognized as a sustainable rehabilitation technique in which the

China has pledged to achieve carbon neutral by 2060 and to begin
reducing CO2 emissions by 2030. This ambitious plan requires a set of
actions across all sectors. The transport sector represents a significant
source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, accounting for 9.12% of the
total emissions in China in the year of 2019 [1]. Road transport, as a
major mode of transport, contributes 82.70% of the GHG emissions in
the transport sector [2]. One of the main sources of GHG emissions in the
road transport sector is the consumption of raw materials and fossil fuels
in maintenance and rehabilitation (M&R) activities to maintain the
deteriorated road pavements and restore their serviceability [3]. On the
other hand, highway agencies are often faced with inadequate budgets
for pavement maintenance, which necessitates the incorporation of
cost-effective M&R treatments into long-term pavement maintenance
schedules.
The cold-in-place recycling with foamed asphalt binders (CIR-F) is
existing pavement materials are reused in place. CIR-F can directly serve
as the asphalt surface layer using foamed asphalt and cement as stabi­
lizer and specialized foamed asphalt cold recycling equipment for on-
site cold milling. A certain amount of foam asphalt, cement, water is
mixed with the recycled mixtures and then go through the processes of
room-temperature mixing, paving, and rolling to realize the reuse of the
existing pavement materials [4]. Compared with hot recycling tech­
nology, the CIR pavement is constructed at normal temperature and
therefore has more significant advantages in terms of environmental
sustainability and resource conservation [5]. It applies to structural
rehabilitation projects for pavements with good soil base stability and
acceptable base layer strength, but large-area surface defects such as
cracks, potholes, rutting, etc. [6]. In addition, with the increasing ser­
vice time of semi-rigid base asphalt pavement in China, bottom-up
structural damages are prone to occur due to the combined effects of
repeated traffic loads and various climatic conditions. Traditional

* Corresponding author at: School of Transportation, Southeast University, Nanjing 210000, Jiangsu, China.
E-mail address: jiang_jiwang@seu.edu.cn (J. Jiang).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.treng.2023.100185
Received 17 April 2023; Received in revised form 6 June 2023; Accepted 12 June 2023
Available online 12 June 2023
2666-691X/© 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-
nc-nd/4.0/).
H. Li et al.
Fig. 1. System boundary.
pavement maintenance requires milling and resurfacing of
multi-layered pavement structures, resulting in high maintenance costs,
long construction periods, and significant impacts on vehicle operations
[7,8]. In contrast, CIR-F can rehabilitate multiple layers of pavement at
once, thus effectively reducing construction time and traffic disruption
[9]. According to long-term field observations, CIR-F, as the base or
surface structure of arterial roads with semi-rigid base asphalt pave­
ment, is in satisfactory condition and has good engineering and envi­
ronmental adaptability [10].
Many research in recent years have demonstrated that CIR-F is a
sustainable and promising pavement maintenance technology due to the
few natural resources required, low mixing temperatures, and small
material transportation needs, and thus has broad application prospects
[11,12]. The improvement in construction technology and material
performance have also led to an increasing interest in the application of
CIR-F in practical pavement maintenance projects [13]. However, most
of the existing research on CIR-F has focused on exploring its perfor­
mance improvement or material properties, while few studies have
simultaneously quantified and evaluated its technical, economic and
environmental performance [14,15]. There is still a lack of quantitative
assessment of the economic and environmental benefits of CIR-F from a
pavement life cycle perspective.
Life cycle assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA) are
two powerful tools for quantifying the environmental and economic
burden of a product, process, or service, respectively. They divide the
entire pavement life cycle into stages, including material production,
pavement construction, use, maintenance, and end-of-life, and calculate
the environmental and economic impacts in stages [16]. Yao et al. [17]
used the LCA method to assess different recycling technologies in terms
of resource depletion, energy consumption and pollutant emissions.
Santos et al. [18]. conducted LCA for an in-place pavement recycling
rehabilitation project and found that recycling-based M&R strategies
including CIR can significantly reduce the environmental impact of a
pavement section throughout its life cycle. Gu et al. [19]. evaluated the
structural performance and sustainability of four cold recycling
2
Transportation Engineering 13 (2023) 100185
technologies (the cold central-plant/ in-place recycling with emulsi­
fied/foamed asphalt binders) and concluded that cold recycled asphalt
pavements can reduce costs, energy consumption and carbon emissions
at the same time. However, most of these studies include only the ma­
terial production, transportation and construction phases and do not
take into account the reduced environmental or economic advantages of
CIR due to its potentially short service life.
Therefore, this study combined LCA and LCCA methods to quanti­
tatively assess the environmental and economic performance of CIR-F
and compared it with a conventional M&R treatment, i.e., mill & fill
(M&F). The proposed method was applied and demonstrated on a
practical pavement maintenance project. Heat maps were used to visu­
alize the average annual energy consumption, carbon emissions, and the
equivalent uniform annual cost (EUAC) of the two M&R treatments.
Accordingly, the influence of service life on their relative environmental
and economic performance can be investigated.
2. Methodology
2.1. Life cycle assessment
2.1.1. Goal and scope definition
In this study, LCA was performed to assess the environmental impact
of CIR-F following the ISO 14,040/44 guidelines [20,21] and the
pavement LCA framework established by Federal Highway Adminis­
tration (FHWA)[22]. The main objective is to quantify the environ­
mental impact of CIR-F, including energy consumption and carbon
emissions, and to reveal the advantages of CIR-F by comparing it with
traditional M&F. The considered life cycle phases include material
extraction and production, pavement construction, material trans­
portation, and work zone traffic management phases. The study is based
on an actual CIR project, and field performance data are not yet avail­
able to consider the use phase. Thus, the use phase was excluded from
the system boundary. The LCA conducted in this study is actually a
cradle-to-laid one [22]. The functional unit (FU) is a one-lane kilometre
H. Li et al. Transportation Engineering 13 (2023) 100185

Table 1 2.1.2. Life cycle inventory (LCI)

Energy consumption and carbon emissions of raw material production. LCI analysis is one of the four stages of LCA, which is the technical
Raw Energy consumption GHG emission factor Data sources process of collecting data to quantify the resources and energy inputted
materials rate (MJ/t) (kg CO2e/t) to and the waste and pollutants outputted from the processes within the
Bitumen 5206.24 190.90 Eurobitume system boundary. In this study, a large amount of process-based LCI data
[23] were collected from a combination of project reports, national specifi­
Coarse 31.82 2.43 Ma et al. [24] cations, public databases, literature, etc., considering the geographical
aggregate location of the present study. Table 1 shows the energy consumption
Fine 58.56 8.69
aggregate
rate and GHG emission factor of the production of raw materials such as
Mineral 207.36 47.21 bitumen and aggregates. The data source for bitumen production is the
powder widely used Eurobitume database [23]. The energy consumption and
Cement 4889.00 928.11 Marceau et al. GHG emissions of aggregate production were estimated using data from
[25].
the relevant literature [24], which were obtained from the Chinese Life
Cycle Database (CLCD) jointly developed by Sichuan University and
section of pavement with a construction width of 9 m and a thickness of Chengdu Yike Environmental Technology Co., Ltd (IKE), and therefore
11 cm. Fig. 1 shows the system boundary of this study. Raw materials for represents the average level of production technology in China. Data on
CIR-F include foamed asphalt binder, water, cement, and RAP, which cement production were taken from the relevant industry association
are mixed (cold mix) at room temperature by a cold recycler. The report [25].
mixture is then carried to the paver and the pavement is laid and rolled Table 2 shows the basic information of the main machinery and
by the pavers and rollers. The newly paved layer must go through curing equipment used in the mixing and construction process of the two M&R
to obtain early-strength, during which time lane closures are required. In alternatives: CIR-F and M&F. The milling and transportation of RAP to
this stage, the moisture in the recycled mixture will gradually evaporate, the landfill in M&F are also included in the construction phase. The
leading to an increase in the strength of the pavement. The raw materials equipment for CIR-F includes regenerators, bitumen tankers, water
for M&F are mainly asphalt binder and aggregates, with a relatively trucks, pavers and rollers. CIR-F was implemented using the Wirtgen
higher binder content. M&F cannot effectively recycle the old pavement 3800CR system, with specific equipment efficiency and energy con­
mixtures. It requires a large amount of natural mineral aggregates, the sumption obtained from the specification. M&F additionally requires a
extraction and transportation of which will cause a significant envi­ mixing plant to produce the hot mix asphalt (HMA) mixture and a
ronmental burden. The mixing temperature is generally around 160 ◦ C milling machine to mill the existing pavement. Except for the CIR
(hot mix) and the mixing is done at the mixing plant, so an additional equipment, the information of other construction machinery was taken
transportation process is required to transport the mixtures to the con­ from the national specifications [27,28], which can reflect the average
struction site. Meanwhile, M&F needs to mill the old pavement and level of construction technology in China.
transport the milled material to the scrap yard. The newly paved The data collected from the contractor or national specifications
pavement must be cooled before it can be opened to traffic. All of these generally contain only energy consumption data, which necessitates the
may cause additional environmental impacts. use of emission factors to estimate GHG emissions from fuel combustion.
In this study, the emission factors listed in the Guidelines for Provincial
Greenhouse Gas Inventories [29] were used for the calculation, and the

Table 2
Information on the main machinery in asphalt mixing and construction.
Machinery Model Function Efficiency Fuel economy Fuel type Data source
CIR-F

CIR system (including 3800 CR Cutting, crushing, spraying, 5 m/min 100 L/h diesel JTG/T 3833–2018[28]
regenerators, asphalt tankers mixing and feeding to
and water trucks) pavers
Paver S2000 Paving 1.46a, 1.47b machine- 136.23 kg/ machine-team JTG/T 3832–2018[27],
team/1000m3 JTG/T 3833–2018[28]
Roller YZC-15 Compaction 0.53 machine-team/ 80.80 kg/ machine-team
(1000m2×15 cm)
YL27 0.47 machine-team/ 50.40 kg/ machine-team
(1000m2×15 cm)
M&F
Hot mixing equipment H40000a Hot mixing bitumen and 1.23 machine-team/ 13,787.14 kg/ machine- Heavy oil, JTG/T 3832–2018[27],
aggregates 1000m3 team, 5151.17 kWh/ electricity JTG/T 3833–2018[28]
machine-team
LB2000b 2.42 machine-team/ 6893.57 kg/ machine-team,
1000m3 2620.88 kWh/ machine-
team
Miller LX200 Milling existing pavement 0.30 machine-team/ 190.46 kg/ machine-team diesel
(1000m2×5 cm)
Paver S2000 Paving 1.46a, 1.47b machine- 136.23 kg/ machine-team
team/1000m3
Roller YZC-15 Rolling 6.14a, 6.18b machine- 80.80 kg/ machine-team
team/1000m3
YL20 2.04a, 2.06b machine- 42.40 kg/ machine-team
team/1000m3
YL27 3.92a, 3.94b machine- 50.40 kg/ machine-team
team/1000m3

Notes: a Medium-grain.
b
Fine-grain.

3
H. Li et al. Transportation Engineering 13 (2023) 100185

Table 3
GHG emission factors.
Raw Emission Unit Data source
materials factors
Table 8
Diesel 3.10 kg CO2e/ Guidelines for Provincial Greenhouse Test results of Pen 60/70 asphalt binder.
kg Gas Inventories [29]
Heavy oil 3.17 kg CO2e/ Indexes Test Requirement Test
kg results methods
Electricity 0.93 kg CO2e/
Needle penetration (25 ◦ C, 5 s, 100 65 60~80 T0604
kWh
g)
Softening point ( ◦ C) 49 ≥46 T0606
Ductility (10 ◦ C) (cm) 90 ≥20 T0605
60 ◦ C dynamic viscosity (Pa⋅s) 193.20 ≥180 T0620
Table 4
Information on the material transportation.
Materials Transport Fuel economy (L/ Load Fuel
distances (km) 100 km) weights (t) types Table 9
Mixture design of AC-13 and AC-20.
Cement 30 40 20 Diesel
Bitumen 100 40 20 Mixtures AC-13 AC-20
Aggregate 50 35 25 Optimal binder content (%) 4.80 (Pen 60/70) 4.10 (Pen 60/70)
Mixture 10 35 25 Sieving size (mm) Passing rate (%)
Milled 10 35 25 31.5 100.0 100.0
materials 26.5 100.0 100.0
19 100.0 97.5
16 100.0 87.3
13.2 94.3 72.5
Table 5
9.5 70.2 55.0
The unit costs of raw materials. 4.75 39.6 39.0
Raw materials Unit cost Unit Data source 2.36 30.2 28.6
1.18 20.6 21.7
Bitumen 4107.00 CNY/tonnes Project report 0.6 14.9 15.3
Aggregate 600.00 CNY/m3 0.3 10.8 8.9
Cement 336.28 CNY/tonnes 0.15 9.0 6.6
0.075 6.0 4.3

Table 6
Information of the two maintenance treatments.
M&R Lane Normal Work Pavement Resurfacing
treatment closure driving zone section thickness
time speed speed length (km) (cm)
(days) (km/h) limit
(km/h)

M&F with 7 80 40 1 11
3 cm AC-
13 and 8
cm AC-20
CIR-F 4 12
Fig. 2. Diagram of material transportation.

values are shown in Table 3.

Material transportation is an important phase in LCA. CIR-F requires
less material transportation, which is one of the important reasons for its
lower environmental or economic burden during the material produc­
tion and construction phases. The transportation process of the two
M&R treatments involved in this study mainly includes the trans­
portation of bitumen from refinery to construction site or mixing plant,
cement from cement plant to construction site, crushed aggregates from
quarry to mixing plant, HMA mixture from mixing plant to construction
site, and milled materials from site to scrap yard. The specific transport
distances, truck fuel consumption, and load weights can be obtained
from the contractor. Fig. 3 and Table 4 show a graphical representation
and the specific information of the transport process.
Pavement maintenance works often require partial or complete Fig. 3. The geographical location of the CIR-F project.

Table 7
Design gradation of cold recycled mix.
Sieving size (mm) 31.5 26.5 19 16 13.2 9.5 4.75 2.36 1.18 0.6 0.3 0.15 0.075

Passing rate (%) 100.0 99.7 94.1 89.4 80.2 68.9 49.2 32.3 22.6 18.8 13.4 8.6 4.6
Lower limit 100 78 70 65 60 50 40 30 20 15 10 6 3
Upper limit 100 100 95 90 85 75 60 50 40 32 25 20 15

4
H. Li et al. Transportation Engineering 13 (2023) 100185

Fig. 4. The construction process of CIR-F.

Fig. 5. Environmental impacts of the two M&R treatments.

number of queued vehicles, queue length, and queue speed. The output
of RealCost was then used as input to the MOVES software developed by
the US Environmental Protection Agency [31] to estimate the additional
environmental impacts due to traffic disruptions in the work zone.

2.1.3. Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA)

LCIA estimates the human or environmental impact of the system by
translating the LCI results into various impact categories. A large variety
of metrics could be used to measure such impact from different aspects.
In this study, carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) is used to measure the
emissions of various GHGs based on their global warming potential
(GWP), by converting amounts of other gases to the equivalent amount
of carbon dioxide with the same GWP. The reason for considering only
CO2e as an impact indicator is that carbon emissions data are more
reliable and easier to localize. The 100-year GWP of each GHG intro­
duced in the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) [26] was used for the calculation.

Fig. 6. Cost comparison of the two M&R treatments. 2.2. Life cycle cost analysis (LCCA)

To evaluate the economic benefits of CIR-F, this study also conducted

traffic closure. National specifications also require vehicles to slow down
LCCA for the two M&R treatments based on the report of Life Cycle Cost
when entering M&R work zone for safety reasons, which will inevitably
Analysis in Pavement Design issued by FHWA [32]. Life cycle costs are
cause traffic disruption and lead to extra vehicular fuel consumption and
generally the sum of initial costs and discounted future costs for all life
carbon emissions. To estimate these additional environmental impacts,
cycle stages, which mainly include agency costs and user costs. Agency
the RealCost software developed by Federal Highway Administration
costs consist of materials, machinery, labour and other administrative
(FHWA) [30] was first used to derive the basic information about work
cost. The unit costs of raw materials in this study were taken from the
zone traffic flow, such as number of vehicles traversing work zone,
corresponding project report, and the specific values are shown in

5
H. Li et al. Transportation Engineering 13 (2023) 100185

Fig. 7. Difference in annual average energy consumption and carbon emissions between CIR-F and M&F.

Fig. 8. Difference in EUAC between CIR-F and M&F.

Table 5. It should be noted that the depreciation, overhaul and main­
tenance costs of CIR-F equipment are typically much higher than
traditional M&F equipment and this needs to be considered to ensure a
fair comparison. The cost information was obtained from the national
specification [28]. User costs mainly include additional vehicle oper­
ating costs, time delay costs and crash costs due to vehicles passing
through work zones with reduced capacity and driving on uneven
pavement. Since there is a lack of reliable multi-year pavement
performance data for CIR-F pavements, it is difficult to estimate the user
cost due to pavement deterioration during normal vehicle operation.
Thus, this study only considers the additional user cost caused by the
speed reduction when the vehicle traverses the M&R work zone, which
was calculated using the RealCost software.

6
H. Li et al.
2.3. Effect of service life
In addition, due to the relatively large variability of milled pavement
materials, the performance and service life of CIR-F pavement under
complex traffic and environmental conditions are generally difficult to
predict [15]. The insufficient durability of CIR-F pavements may in­
crease the frequency of pavement maintenance, thereby offsetting the
environmental and economic benefits gained from the material pro­
duction and pavement construction phases. Therefore, it is necessary to
investigate the environmental and economic performance of CIR-F from
a life cycle perspective. However, as mentioned earlier, there are not
enough long-term performance data for CIR-F pavements, making it
difficult to estimate the additional environmental and economic impacts
in the user phase resulting from pavement deterioration. To address this
problem, this study adopted a simplified approach to integrate the ser­
vice life of both M&R treatments into the assessment. Firstly, all possible
combinations of the service life of the two M&R treatments are
considered, e.g., assuming that both have a service life between 5 and 20
years, a total of 16×16 = 256 combinations are obtained. Secondly, for
each combination, the average annual energy consumption, GHG
emissions, and Equivalent Uniform Annual Cost (EUAC) of the two
treatments were estimated, as shown in Eq. (1). The discount rate was
set to be 4% which was a commonly used value in pavement economic
analysis studies [8,32,33]. Finally, the differences between the two
M&R treatments in terms of these three metrics were calculated and
visualized in heatmaps, where a positive difference indicates that CIR-F
is more advantageous than M&F for the corresponding service life as­
sumptions, and vice versa.
n
i(1 + i)
EUAC = P (1)
(1 + i)n − 1
where P is the present value of the total cost, i is the discount rate (4%),
and n is the service life.
3. Case study
3.1. Project overview
This study assessed and compared the economic and environmental
performance of CIR-F and conventional M&F, using the CIR-F project on
Provincial Road 221 in Jiangsu Province, China as an example. Pro­
vincial Road 221 is an important arterial road in the Rudong County of
Jiangsu. The CIR-F pavement section is located at stakes K105+915 to
K106+915, with a total length of 1000 m and a construction width of 9
m. The original pavement structure consists of 3 cm AC-13, 4 cm AC-20,
and 15 cm limestone gravel base. The CIR project recycled the 7 cm
asphalt layer and 4 cm limestone gravel base to construct a 12 cm CIR-F
asphalt layer. It should be noted that an additional HMA overlay is
usually needed after CIR-F to improve the anti-skidding and moisture
resistance of the wearing course. However, the project in this study is on
a provincial road with low traffic volume and inferior design standard,
so no overlay has been paved for this road. The traffic management
mode of half-width closed and half-width construction was adopted for
the construction of CIR-F. The annual average daily traffic (AADT) of
this section is about 4000 vehicles per day according to the project
report. Fig. 3 shows the geographical location of the CIR-F project. Fig. 4
is an illustration of the specific construction process of CIR-F.
In this study, the performance of the two M&R treatments, CIR-F and
M&F with 3 cm AC-13 and 8 cm AC-20, were compared from the eco­
nomic and environmental perspective, and their basic information is
shown in Table 6. The lane closure times for M&F and CIR-F due to
construction, curing (for CIR-F) and cooling (for M&F) were 7 and 4 days
[6], respectively.
7
Transportation Engineering 13 (2023) 100185
3.2. Mixture design
3.2.1. CIR-F
The CIR technology adopts 100% on-site RAP material, and the
aggregate gradation is shown in Table 7. The asphalt used for the con­
struction was a Pen 60/70 asphalt binder. According to the indoor
foaming test, the optimum foaming temperature, water consumption,
expansion rate, and half-life period are 170 ◦ C, 2.00%, 12.0 times, and
11.50 s, respectively. The optimum moisture content and maximum dry
density of the asphalt mixture were determined by the heavy-duty
compaction test to be 7.00% and 2.04 g/cm3, respectively. The opti­
mum asphalt content was determined by the Marshall design method to
be 2.50%. The technical indicators of asphalt binders are shown in
Table 8. In addition, in order to improve the mixture strength, 1.50% of
P.O42.5 Portland cement by weight of aggregates was added. The added
water to the RAP is 4.8% in the field.
3.2.2. M&F
The two mixtures, AC-13 and AC-20, used as resurfacing materials of
M&F, both adopted basalt aggregate and the Pen 60/70 asphalt binder.
The optimal binder content was determined according to the Marshall
design method. The testing results of raw materials all met the re­
quirements of the specification. The detailed information of the mixture
design is shown in Table 9.
4. Results and discussion
4.1. Environmental impact
Fig. 5 shows the breakdown of total energy consumption and GHG
emissions for the two M&R treatments. Since GHG emissions are mainly
from fuel combustion, the ranking of energy consumption and carbon
emissions is consistent for different stages in Fig. 5(a) and (b). It can be
found that the environmental impact of CIR-F is mainly caused by the
production of cement and bitumen as well as the construction phase. As
for M&F, the hot mixing of asphalt mixture and the bitumen production
are the main sources, with the hot-mixing process accounting for about
50% of the total energy consumption and carbon emissions. These
findings are consistent with the literature [34,35], where asphalt pro­
duction (both raw material production and mixing) was found to
contribute the most to the environmental impact. The overall environ­
mental impact of CIR-F is significantly lower than that of conventional
M&F (59.62% reduction in energy consumption and 45.73% reduction
in carbon emissions) because it does not require hot mixing and the
addition of new aggregates. In addition, the normal speed of vehicles is
assumed to be 80 km/h in the present case study, then the speed limit in
work zone should be 40 km/h according to the national specification
[36]. Studies have shown that most vehicles achieve maximum fuel ef­
ficiency at a steady speed of 64–80 km/h. Below and above this opti­
mum speed, fuel efficiency decreases, resulting in increased fuel
consumption [37]. Thus, the reduced speed in work zone areas leads to
additional energy consumption and GHG emissions compared to normal
operation. Moreover, M&F requires longer lane closures, so it has a
greater environmental impact than CIR-F during the work zone traffic
management phase.
4.2. Economic impact
Fig. 6 shows the total cost breakdown for both M&R treatments,
which includes agency costs associated with raw material production,
asphalt mixing, and pavement construction, as well as user costs due to
work zone traffic disruptions. The main cost of CIR-F comes from the use
of bituminous materials. The construction cost, as well as the time delay
and operating costs of vehicles slowing down to cross the work zone,
also account for nearly a quarter of the total CIR-F costs. Although
cement production has a large environmental impact, its contribution to
H. Li et al.
the cost is almost negligible due to the relatively low price of cement.
The hot mixing process dominates the total energy consumption and
carbon emissions of M&F, but it is relatively inexpensive. Moreover, the
high percentage of virgin aggregates in M&F significantly increases the
cost, with the cost of aggregate and bitumen contributing the most. In
this case, the cost reduction of CIR-F compared to conventional M&F is
approximately 66.45% when only considering the material production,
pavement construction, and work zone traffic management phases.
4.3. Impact of service life
The impact of M&R service life on the economic and environmental
advantages of CIR-F over conventional M&F were illustrated in Fig. 7
and Fig. 8. The x- and y-axis represent the service life of M&F and CIR-F,
respectively. Fig. 7(a) and (c) and Fig. 8(a) are to show more clearly the
dividing line between negative and positive values. A positive value
means that CIR-F has environmental or economic benefits over M&F.
The colours of each grid in Fig. 7(b) and (d) and Fig. 8(b) indicate the
magnitude of the difference in annual average energy consumption and
carbon emissions and EUAC between the two M&R treatments for a
given combination of service lives. The redder the colour, the larger the
difference, i.e., the greater the reduction of energy consumption, carbon
emission, or cost of CIR-F over traditional M&F. The bluer the colour,
the opposite. The dashed line separates the areas with positive and
negative values, where the advantages gained by CIR-F in material
production, transportation, and work zone traffic management phases
are offset due to its shorter service life. As can be seen from the figures,
when considering only one M&R cycle, the annual average energy
consumption and carbon emissions of CIR-F are most likely lower than
that of conventional M&F. The environmental advantages of CIR-F can
only be completely offset when the service life of CIR-F is significantly
less than M&F (e.g., 15 years for M&F and less than 8 years for CIR-F).
The economic advantages of CIR-F are more difficult to be surpassed by
M&F. As shown in Fig. 8, the EUAC of CIR-F can be smaller than that of
M&F only if the service lives of M&F and CIR-F are 20 years and 5 years,
respectively.
5. Conclusion
This study conducted LCA and LCCA to quantitatively evaluate the
environmental and economic performance of CIR-F and compare it to
the conventional M&F. The differences in average annual energy con­
sumption and carbon emissions as well as the EUAC between the two
M&R treatments were visualized through heat maps to explore the
impact of service life on the environmental and economic advantages of
CIR-F. The proposed methods were applied to the CIR-F pavement
rehabilitation project on Provincial Road 221 in Jiangsu Province as a
case study. The following main conclusions were obtained:
1) The environmental impact of CIR-F is mainly caused by the pro­
duction of cement and bitumen as well as the construction phase,
while M&F is mainly caused by the hot mixing and bitumen pro­
duction process, with the hot mixing accounting for about half of the
energy consumption and carbon emissions. Since CIR-F does not
require hot mixing and adding new aggregates, the overall envi­
ronmental impact of CIR-F is significantly lower than that of tradi­
tional M&F, with a 59.62% reduction in energy consumption and a
45.73% reduction in carbon emissions.
2) The main cost of CIR-F comes from the use of bituminous material.
The construction cost, as well as the time delay and operating costs of
vehicles slowing down to cross the work zone, also account for nearly
a quarter of the total CIR-F costs. The large amount of new aggregate
used in M&F adds significantly to its cost, making it the largest cost
contributor. When only the material production, pavement con­
struction and work zone traffic management phases are considered,
8
Transportation Engineering 13 (2023) 100185
the cost of CIR-F is about 66.45% lower compared to conventional
M&F.
3) When considering only one maintenance cycle, the annual average
energy consumption and carbon emissions of CIR-F are in most cases
lower than those of conventional M&F. The environmental advan­
tages of CIR-F can only be completely offset when the service life of
CIR-F is significantly less than M&F (e.g., 15 years for M&F and less
than 8 years for CIR-F).
4) The economic advantage of CIR-F is basically unlikely to be sur­
passed by M&F unless the difference in service life is very large, e.g.
20 years for M&F and less than 5 years for CIR-F.
Despite the contributions made by this study, there are still oppor­
tunities to further extend the research. For example, this paper only
compares the economic and environmental performance of CIR-F with
conventional M&F, aiming to provide a quantitative basis for further
promotion of this green pavement maintenance technology in practice.
Future research could also include other pavement maintenance treat­
ments with a more comprehensive comparison and assessment of their
economic and environmental performance, such as incorporating use
phases, to provide guidance for pavement maintenance decision-
making. Fig. 2
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgement
This study was conducted under the support of Jiangsu Industry-
University-Research Cooperation Project (No.20220890, Study on the
adaptability and cost-benefit of cold in-place recycling technology for
asphalt pavement).
References
[1] International Energy Agency (IEA), Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Energy (2019).
Retrieved from, https://www.iea.org/countries/china.
[2] L. Xue, Y. Jin, R. Yu, Y. Liu, H. Ren, Toward “Net Zero” Emissions in the Road
Transport Sector in China, World Resources Institute, 2019.
[3] L. Yao, Z. Leng, J. Jiang, F. Ni, Large-Scale Maintenance and Rehabilitation
Optimization for Multi-Lane Highway Asphalt Pavement: a Reinforcement
Learning Approach, IEEE Trans. Intell. Transp. Syst. (2022).
[4] G. Zou, X. Sun, X. Liu, J. Zhang, Influence factors on using recycled concrete
aggregate in foamed asphalt mixtures based on tensile strength and moisture
resistance, Constr. Build. Mater. 265 (2020), 120363.
[5] S. Jain, B. Singh, Cold mix asphalt: an overview, J. Clean. Prod. 280 (2021),
124378.
[6] F. Xiao, S. Yao, J. Wang, X. Li, S. Amirkhanian, A literature review on cold
recycling technology of asphalt pavement, Constr. Build. Mater. 180 (2018)
579–604.
[7] L. Yao, Q. Dong, J. Jiang, F. Ni, Deep reinforcement learning for long-term
pavement maintenance planning, Comput. Aided Civ. Infrastruct. Eng. 35 (11)
(2020) 1230–1245.
[8] L. Yao, Q. Dong, F. Ni, J. Jiang, X. Lu, Y. Du, Effectiveness and cost-effectiveness
evaluation of pavement treatments using life-cycle cost analysis, J. Transp. Eng.
145 (2) (2019), 04019006. Part B: Pavements.
[9] H. Zhao, J. Su, S. Ma, C. Su, X. Wang, Z. Li, S. Cui, Study on Cold Recycled Asphalt
Mixtures with Emulsified/Foamed Asphalt in the Laboratory and On-Site, Coatings
12 (7) (2022) 1009.
[10] V. Papavasiliou, A. Loizos, Field performance and fatigue characteristics of
recycled pavement materials treated with foamed asphalt, Constr. Build. Mater. 48
(2013) 677–684.
[11] W. Yang, J. Ouyang, Y. Meng, B. Han, Y. Sha, Effect of curing and compaction on
volumetric and mechanical properties of cold-recycled mixture with asphalt
emulsion under different cement contents, Constr. Build. Mater. 297 (2021),
123699.
[12] J. Jiang, F. Ni, J. Zheng, Y. Han, X. Zhao, Improving the high-temperature
performance of cold recycled mixtures by polymer-modified asphalt emulsion, Int.
J. Pavement Eng. 21 (1) (2020) 41–48.
H. Li et al.
[13] Z. Zhao, J. Jiang, Z. Chen, F. Ni, Moisture migration of bitumen emulsion-based
cold in-place recycling pavement after compaction: real-time field measurement
and laboratory investigation, J. Clean. Prod. (2022), 132213.
[14] F.V. Guatimosim, K.L. Vasconcelos, L.L. Bernucci, K.J. Jenkins, Laboratory and
field evaluation of cold recycling mixture with foamed asphalt, Road Mater.
Pavement Des. 19 (2) (2018) 385–399.
[15] Z. Chen, J. Yi, H. Zhao, H. Luan, M. Xu, L. Zhang, D. Feng, Strength development
and deterioration mechanisms of foamed asphalt cold recycled mixture based on
MD simulation, Constr. Build. Mater. 269 (2021), 121324.
[16] M.R.M. Hasan, Z. You, X. Yang, A comprehensive review of theory, development,
and implementation of warm mix asphalt using foaming techniques, Constr. Build.
Mater. 152 (2017) 115–133.
[17] L. Yao, Z. Leng, J. Lan, R. Chen, J. Jiang, Environmental and economic assessment
of collective recycling waste plastic and reclaimed asphalt pavement into pavement
construction: a case study in Hong Kong, J. Clean. Prod. 336 (2022), 130405.
[18] J. Santos, J. Bryce, G. Flintsch, A. Ferreira, B. Diefenderfer, A life cycle assessment
of in-place recycling and conventional pavement construction and maintenance
practices, Struct. Infrastruct. Eng. 11 (9) (2015) 1199–1217.
[19] F. Gu, W. Ma, R.C. West, A.J. Taylor, Y. Zhang, Structural performance and
sustainability assessment of cold central-plant and in-place recycled asphalt
pavements: a case study, J. Clean. Prod. 208 (2019) 1513–1523.
[20] ISO, ISO International Standard 14040: Environmental Management – Life Cycle
Assessment – Principles and Framework, International Organization for
Standardization, Geneva, Switzerland, 2006.
[21] ISO, ISO International Standard 14044: Environmental Management – Life Cycle
Assessment – Requirements and Guidelines, International Organization for
Standardization, Geneva, Switzerland, 2006.
[22] J. Harvey, J. Meijer, H. Ozer, I.L. Al-Qadi, A. Saboori, A. Kendall, Pavement life
cycle assessment framework (2016).
[23] Eurobitume, Life Cycle Inventory: Bitumen (2011). Retrieved from, https://www.
eurobitume.eu/fileadmin/pdf-downloads/LCI%20Report-Website-2ndEdition-2
0120726.pdf.
[24] F. Ma, W. Dong, Z. Fu, R. Wang, Y. Huang, J. Liu, Life cycle assessment of
greenhouse gas emissions from asphalt pavement maintenance: a case study in
China, J. Clean. Prod. 288 (2021), 125595.
Transportation Engineering 13 (2023) 100185
[25] M. Marceau, M.A. Nisbet, M.G. Van Geem, Life cycle inventory of portland cement
manufacture (2006).
[26] Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Climate Change 2013: IPCC
Fifth Assessment Report, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Geneva,
Switzerland (2018).
[27] Ministry of Transport of the People’s Republic of China, Highway engineering
budget quota (JTG/T 3832-2018) (2018).
[28] Ministry of Transport of the People’s Republic of China, Highway Engineering
Machinery Shifts Quota (JTG/T 3833-2018) (2018).
[29] National Development and Reform Commission of the People’s Republic of China,
Guidelines for Provincial Greenhouse Gas Inventories. China (2011).
[30] Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), Life-Cycle Cost Analysis Software,
Federal Highway Administration, Washington, DC (2011).
[31] United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Motor Vehicle Emission
Simulator (MOVES), Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC (2014).
[32] J. Walls III, M.R Smith, Life cycle cost analysis in pavement design-interim
technical bulletin (1998).
[33] Y. Pan, Y. Shang, G. Liu, Y. Xie, C. Zhang, Y. Zhao, Cost-effectiveness evaluation of
pavement maintenance treatments using multiple regression and life-cycle cost
analysis, Constr. Build. Mater. 292 (2021), 123461.
[34] F.G. Praticò, M. Giunta, M. Mistretta, T.M. Gulotta, Energy and environmental life
cycle assessment of sustainable pavement materials and technologies for urban
roads, Sustainability 12 (2) (2020) 704.
[35] F.G. Praticò, M. Giunta, M. Mistretta, T.M. Gulotta, Measuring the Sustainability of
Transportation Infrastructures Through Comparative Life Cycle and Energy
Assessment, New Metropolitan Perspectives: Knowledge Dynamics and Innovation-
driven Policies Towards Urban and Regional Transition 2 (2021). Volume.
[36] National Development and Reform Commission of the People’s Republic of China,
Safety Work Rules for Highway Maintenance (JTG H30-2015) (2015).
[37] T. Wang, C. Kim, J. Harvey, Energy consumption and Greenhouse Gas Emission
from highway work zone traffic in pavement life cycle assessment, International
Symposium on Pavement Life Cycle Assessment, Davis, California, USA (2014).