Research on innovative biobinders for sustainable road pavements The BioRoadPAV Project

Research on biobinders has been recognized as an essential contribution to achieving the sustainable development goals established by the United Nations. The paper aims to present the ongoing BioRoadPAV® project – New Biobinders for Application on Road Pavements – that is currently being developed in Portugal from 2021 to 2023. The main objective is to develop new road biobinders obtained from bio-oil produced by an innovative process of thermochemical liquefaction of biomass. The paper describes the project's main activities, from laboratory design development to full-scale road construction, and presents preliminary bio-oil (heavy fraction) and biobinder production and characterization results. The results confirmed the suitability of the bio-oil and encouraged further investigations related to the optimization of the biobinder and its application in asphalt mixtures.