Construction Materials - Atmosphere

Impact of construction materials on the atmosphere

Asphalt binder is an important construction material mainly used for infrastructure pavements as well as industrial floors and roofing. The emissions caused by asphalt binder are highly relevant for the atmosphere and workers' health.

Main focus of the research is to heat asphalt binder to paving temperatures and monitoring the exhaling gases by mass spectrometry. Furthermore, we are interested in the mechanistic details of the gas phase during photooxidative ageing¹ of the asphalt binder surface and its efficiency of the conversion of VOCs, NOx, Ozone with Asphalt binder, monitoring both binder properties as well as gas phase kinetics.

The aim is to introduce such gases in various mix into the ageing cell and to determine its kinetics and to track the material properties as a response to this oxidative gas mixture. Furthermore, these experiments will be extended to investigations of VOC, NOx and Ozone interaction with specially treated photocatalytic active asphalt binder and its effects on the binder properties.