What is ELASTIKO®️ Rubber Asphalt?
Elastiko®️ Rubber asphalt is not new but just starting to resurface throughout the US. It is produced from grinding up whole scrap tires from automobiles. Then the use of the ground tiers is mixed with the asphalt and then laid. Being the largest market for ground tiers, rubberized asphalt consumes an estimated 220,000,000 pounds or around 12 million tires annually. More and more states are starting to see the benefits of rubber and recently have been taking on the old technology and mastering the process.
Elastiko®️ Engineered Crumb Rubber Asphalt (ECR) is a hot mix, asphaltic-concrete, modifier (NOT liquid binder additive). Over 4 million tons of ECR-modified hot mix has performed impeccably in a wide range of harsh climate and road-use conditions for more than ten years. There are many benefits that afford to asphalt plants when they use rubber asphalt instead of polymer as a means of modification. Polymer modified asphalt tends to be sticky and hard to process through a plant’s system. As a result, production rates can be much less than if using ECR to modify your mix. Also, there tends to be no build up in conveyors, silos or other plant equipment when using ECR.
Elastiko®️ Rubber Asphalt Benefits:
• ECR reduces the cost of a two grade bump: by $2-$4 per mix ton
• ECR makes your plant run faster compared to polymer modified mixes: lower mix viscosities permit 10-15% faster plant throughput
• ECR generates less waste: mixes leave the truck with almost no residue in the bed, reducing truck cleanout waste
• Rubber Asphalt allows more efficient compaction: ECR mixes typically require 10-20% fewer roller passes to achieve compliant compaction
• ECR pavements work well in thinlay applications: Compared to standard unmodified hot mix asphalt, ECR pavements can achieve greater durability with thinner lifts.
People who manage roads, especially publicly funded ones, are having to do more with less given their budget restraints. That’s where Elastiko®️ rubber asphalt information comes to the rescue. Everyone knows that ECR modified asphalt is less expensive to produce than polymer modified mixes. This reduced expense is passed along to road managers through lower bids, thus allowing limited resources to be spread out even further. So, not only do road owners get better roads, but they get better roads at a better price. Road owners realize: lower bid costs and better roads.
Over the past decade, researchers in the U.S. have tried to develop an approach that will allow the introduction of dry process rubberized asphalt pavement in a way that is both cost-effective and free of the engineering challenges that have limited the use of crumb rubber modifiers (CRM) in the past. Chemically engineered crumb rubber introduced like an aggregate into asphalt plants during mix production through a dry process meets those customer needs.
Here is how the Elastiko®️ rubber asphalt process works:
A chemically Engineered Crumb Rubber product called Elastiko ECR is fed into your plant during mix production, just like a fine aggregate. The heated binder reacts with the ECR during mixing, storage and transport. The delivered mix lays and performs like a polymer-modified pavement, but at a fraction of the cost.
Asphalt Plus LLC is a specialty chemical and equipment manufacturing company headquartered near Chicago, IL. They produceElastiko®️ engineered crumb rubber additive for rubberized asphalt application. Over the past two decades, extensive lab also field work has created a new binder modification option for asphalt producers. Dry process rubber asphalt also allows you to produce rubber-modified mixes that perform like polymer-modified mixes without the use of terminal blending. Asphalt Plus engineered rubber has endured a wide range of harsh climate & road use conditions.
