Preparation, Characterization and Hot Storage Stability of Asphalt Modified by Waste Polyethylene Packaging

Waste polyethylene packaging (WPE) was used to modify asphalt, and hot storage stability of the modified asphalt was studied in this paper. The morphological change and component loss of WPE modified asphalt were characterized by fluorescence microscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), thermogravimetry (TG) and isolation testing. In addition, the mechanism of the hot storage stability of WPE modified asphalt was discussed. The results showed that the modification of asphalt with WPE was a physical process. It was found that the filament or partly network-like structure formed in the modified asphalt system was beneficial to improving the hot storage stability. Moreover, the addition of WPE resulted in a decrease in both the light components volatilization and the macromolecules decomposition of asphalt. It was demonstrated that when the content of WPE in matrix asphalt was less than 10 wt%, the service performances of modified asphalt could be better.