Construction team around the earth rely on bitumen — an improbably sticky by - production of crude oil colour production — as the main binding agent for asphalt . But a team of scientists estimate that a compound found within plants could help exchange it , get road - work up a greener , more sustainable practice .
Ted Slaghek and his colleagues formTNO , a non - profit from the Netherlands that develops scientific discipline into sustainable real - man applications , suggest that a plant life mote known as lignin could substitute bitumen . Lignin — which keeps water out of plants and binds them together , too — is chemically quite similar to bitumen : it has a large turn or carbon paper ring in its structure . Indeed , some have propose that the similarities could allow the two to be simply mixed together to produce a mixture that swaps some bitumen out of the usual construction mix .
Such attempt have n’t worked . But Slaghek explain at the 249th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society yesterday that integrate lignin into the bitumen at the molecular level does grow a operable miscellanea for road - laying . In fact , PhysOrg reports , it ’s possible to develop a 50 - 50 mix of bitumen and lignin that works well for such diligence , halving the need for bitumen . Slaghek ’s team excuse that lignin can be used to improve the real qualities of bitumen mixtures , making it intemperately in warm weather or more fictile in the cold . In spell , it could make mineral pitch better suit to extremes of temperature .
There ’s for sure enough lignin in the world . It account for up to a third of all the the teetotal stuff in tree . In fact it ’s removed as a waste product during the output of paper — think there ’s a ready supplying of 50 million tons of the stuff around the existence every year .
The next step is to turn the lab work into practice . Indeed , Slaghek is to commence expression of hertz itinerary made from the new lignin - bitumen mixture afterward this year . If that ’s a success , we may all presently be driving on tree matter . [ PhysOrg ]
Image byTrey Ratcliffunder Creative Commons license
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