As the humans of planet Earth focus their energy on environmentally friendly businesses, recycling has become paramount in every industry. The importance of environmentally conscious action is increasing all the time. Asphalt companies have a few options for recycling materials. Read on to learn all about the environmental strides the asphalt field is making through three different recycling processes.

Milling

Asphalt milling is the asphalt removal process of pulling up and grinding down existing pavement. The process requires a heavy-duty construction vehicle called a milling machine or a cold planer. Milling is a dynamic process. It ranges from micro milling to full depth removal.

Micro milling is a shallow milling process that only remove the top portion of the asphalt in order to smooth and even it out. Micro milling prevents sub-grade from mixing with the asphalt. This ensures that the micro milled asphalt is recyclable.

Another type of milling is deep level milling. This milling is not ideal for recycling due to the fact that it has sub-grade and possibly debris mixed in.

However, micro milling is much more common. The milling machine travels down the street slowly, along with a big dump truck. On the bottom of the machine is a rotating drum with tough blades. The blades break up the asphalt and move it into the center of the drum. Then the conveyor belt carries the ground up asphalt to the dump truck. Finally, the dump truck takes the ground up asphalt off to be recycled into aggregate for new asphalt.

Pulverizing

Pulverizing also involves tearing up existing asphalt. However, it is a little different from what milling is.

It involves tearing up asphalt in a given location in order to use it to repave the exact same road or area. The asphalt is ground up and redeposited back where it was pulled from. The sub-base is left in place and the ground up asphalt is re-laid on top of it.

Pulverizing is ideal when a road is too torn up for patching, but the project has a limited budget. It shifts prices in supplies down while leaving labor relatively equal. However, leaving crushed up asphalt gravel in the place of a highway is not really okay with most people. Pulverizing has a follow up process that makes the recycling efforts usable.

Stabilization

Stabilization turns pulverized asphalt back into drivable road. In the process, pavers lay binding agents over the ground up asphalt. They create the binding agents with tar and other waterproof materials. The binding material is given time to soak in so it can truly rebind the asphalt.

Once the binding agent has soaked in, Voila! A brand-new road or parking lot that is ready to go. The recycled road is just as strong as the original road while staying easy on the pocketbook.