Performance Study On Waste Tire Crumb Rubber Modified Asphalt Activated By Low Temperature Plasma

With the development of automobile industry, the amount of waste tires has been increased rapidly. It is significant to solve the Black Pollution and reuse or recycle scrap tires for the development of circular economy and ecological industry. As a great renewable resource, scrap tires were recognized and gotten more attention all over the world.Low-temperature plasma modification(LTPM) technology, as an effective method for surface modification, has extremely wide prospect in material industry application. An important feature of plasma treatment is that it affects only the surface of a material subjected to treatment, while the bulk of the material retaining the original properties. In the glow discharge plasmas process, the gas were ionized partially or completely to be high energy active molecules, including electron, ion, photon and free radical, etc. According to the plasma generation condition, the surface physical and chemical properties of the material can be modified for the purpose.In this paper, LTPM was used as the activated method to prepare the modified asphalt with the activated rubber power, which provides a new way for the utilization of waste tires.The surface properties of activated rubber power in LTPM were analyzed by FTIR(Fourier Transform Infrared) and SEM(Scanning Electron Microscope). Compared to the original rubber power, the chemical functional groups of activated rubber power do not change significantly, but the amount of some groups increased. Meanwhile, the surface etching effect is very obvious in the activated rubber power, becoming rough and jagged. Results show that LTPM can enhance the physical mix effect between the rubber power and asphalt, and then improve the performance of modified asphalt.Wet process was chosen at high speed shear condition to prepare the modified asphalt with waste tire rubber power treated by LTPM in this research. The major properties of the activated rubber powder modified asphalt were studied. Penetration, softening point, ductility and viscosity has greatly improved, which show that the high temperature performance, low temperature performance, temperature sensitivity and stability performance were improved significantly. DTA( Differential Thermal Analysis) results testify that the thermal performance of activated rubber powder modified asphalt can be affected by LTPM, becoming more stable in thermal performance. When powder content is 15% ~ 20% the modification effect is best.