The motorway of tomorrow: laying of the new green and hi-tech asphalt with graphene on the A4 Turin-Milan begins
The "Autostrada del Domani" presentation press conference organized by ASTM and Iterchimica took place on Thursday 20 October 2022 at the San Rocco Sud service area near Rondissone (TO). The event was held on the occasion of the repaving of the first 2 km of the A4 Turin-Milan motorway.
The overall work will affect the slow travel lane in both directions for a total of 250 km. The repaving activity will make the A4 motorway the first motorway in Europe to use Gipave, the green and hi-tech technology that combines graphene and hard recovered plastics, and 70% recycled asphalt.
This combination guarantees greater performance in terms of sustainability and resistance, increasing the life of the flooring by up to 75%. Compared to maintenance carried out with traditional technologies, this solution will allow significant environmental savings: in fact, it will allow energy consumption to be reduced by approximately 90 million kW/h (-30%), equal to the annual needs of approximately 30.000 families, to reduce 18 million 350 thousand kg of CO2eq emissions (-38,5%), equal to the absorption action of approximately 115.000 trees, as well as saving almost 23 million kg of bitumen and approximately 480 million kg of raw materials (-40%) . In addition, thanks to Gipave, approximately 1,5 million kg of hard plastics will be reused (approximately the weight of 1200 cars).
This activity is part of the broader "Smart Roads" project of the ASTM Group. The Turin-Milan route, which connects the two main economic and industrial centers in the north-west of the country, was chosen by the Group to represent not only symbolically, but also in fact, the ASTM vision of the Motorway of the Future.
“After 6 years of research and development and numerous tests that have demonstrated both the technical and environmental performances of this technology, we are extremely proud to contribute together with the ASTM Group to the resurfacing of the A4 Turin-Milan motorway which will thus become the first hi-tech, safe and sustainable highway in Europe” commented Federica Giannattasio, CEO of Iterchimica.
A work team made up of ASTM, Iterchimica, Itinera and SINA (the latter part of the Gavio Group) took part in the creation of this important infrastructure. The Bitux company provided the mixtures for the pilot project, while the sustainability study was carried out by the University of Bologna.
