Rheological properties of polyacrylates used as synthetic road binders

Most adhesives and binders, including bitumen for asphalt mixture production, are presently produced from petrochemicals after the refining of crude oil. The fact that crude oil reserves are a finite resource means that in the future, it may become necessary to produce these materials from alternative and probably renewable sources. Suitable resources of this kind may include polysaccharides, plant oils and proteins. This paper deals with the synthesis of polymer binders from monomers that could, in future, be derived from renewable resources. These binders consist of polyethyl acrylate (PEA) of different molecular weight, polymethyl acrylate (PMA) and polybutyl acrylate (PBA), which were synthesised from ethyl acrylate, methyl acrylate and butyl acrylate, respectively, by atom transfer radical polymerisation. The rheological properties of these binders were determined by means of oscillatory testing using a dynamic shear rheometer and combinations of stress/strain, temperature and frequency sweeps. The results indicate that PEA can be produced to have rheological properties similar to that of ‘soft’ 100/150 penetration grade bitumen, PMA with similar rheological properties to that of ‘hard’ 10/20 penetration grade bitumen, while PBA, due to its highly viscous nature and low dynamic moduli, cannot be used on its own as a binder. The synthetic polymers were found to be thermo-rheologically simple, and the shift factors, used to produce the dynamic moduli master curves, were found to fit an Arrhenius function.