Green Science and Technology, Exploiting Extraordinary Road —— Interview with Guangxi Jiaoke Rubber Asphalt Technical Team

20021year is the anniversary of the founding of the Party 100, the first year of the 14th Five-Year Plan, and a crucial year for accelerating the construction of a transportation power. Looking back, under the guidance of the party, China's transportation infrastructure has developed from a long distance to a long March. Earth-shaking changes have also brought serious "black pollution" to waste tires. However, a group of people have spent more than ten years studying one thing: rubber asphalt, which helps to build a transportation power in order to implement the "peak carbon dioxide emission" and "carbon neutrality" double carbon targets in China's ecological civilization construction layout strategy. They are the research team of new materials technology for rubber asphalt pavement of Guangxi Jiaoke Group New Materials Company.

Rubber asphalt is a solid-liquid mixture formed by mixing rubber powder particles with matrix asphalt at high temperature. Because it can not only solve the problems of environmental pollution and efficient recycling caused by a large number of waste tires, but also has strong anti-aging, high temperature resistance and crack resistance, it has become the second largest modified asphalt, which has been widely recognized and widely used in this area.

In 2008, the technical team began to study the application of rubber asphalt pavement materials. Prior to this, the traditional composite pavement with cement concrete and rubber asphalt often appeared diseases such as asphalt layer falling off and moving. The primary problem before them is to overcome the "green high-performance composite pavement technology". Although foreign teams have been studying this technology as early as 100 years ago, there are few successful cases for reference in China.

As one of the largest karst landform areas and late-developing areas in China, Guangxi's traffic research is facing greater challenges, and it is bound to be risky to try new things. But young people who are passionate about scientific research always have an indomitable spirit. "As long as the mind does not decline, the method is always more difficult than it is." This is what technical team members often say. To this end, they immersed themselves in the laboratory day and night. Facing the cold test equipment and repeating boring experiments every day, they will never be discouraged by repeated failures, but keep thinking, looking for reasons from countless failure data and seeking breakthroughs. After unremitting efforts, the team finally independently developed the "green high-performance composite pavement technology" and put it into use in several urban main roads. The application test results show that the anti-skid and anti-rutting ability of asphalt overlay is improved by more than 1 10%, the high-temperature deformation resistance is improved by nearly 1 times, and the anti-aging ability is also enhanced.

Due to the particularity of the research work on new materials of rubber asphalt pavement, the members of the rubber asphalt technology research team of Guangxi Jiaoke need to stay at the construction project site. In the eyes of ordinary people, the open-air working environment with high temperature, sunshine and wind and rain is not suitable for scientific research that needs full attention. However, they seem to enjoy it, and frequently go back and forth between the processing fields, mixing fields and paving points of various construction sites day and night, showing the tenacity of scientific researchers in their busyness. Because everyone thinks that the construction front line is the closest place to scientific research results, they work harder.

Compared with the challenge of the weather, the greater "bitterness" of the research team is the embarrassment of the family. Living for a long time and busy with work, they spend much less time with their families than with rubber asphalt. In order to finish the project task on time, many team members left their pregnant wives behind, failed to fulfill their husband's responsibilities, and hurried home until the child was born. From the team, we can see that as a scientific researcher, we give up our family and achieve everyone's dedication.

Over the years, the team has given full play to the advantages of Industry-University-Research's integration and paid attention to technology research and development and engineering application, which has made the technology of rubber asphalt pavement in Guangxi more and more mature and reliable, economical and reasonable, and the construction is guaranteed. The research project has realized the harmless recovery of waste tires 100%, solved the key problems such as storage stability of rubber asphalt, completed the industrial production of rubber asphalt, and derived 10 products, with the technical level reaching the domestic leading level. At present, the complete set of rubber asphalt technology of Guangxi Jiaoke Group has been popularized and applied in the whole region 1000 kilometers, with the total production and supply of rubber asphalt reaching 70,000 tons and the total industrial output value reaching 300 million yuan. The team and related technical achievements have successively won provincial and ministerial-level scientific and technological awards and honors such as the local standard award for important technologies of the autonomous region government, the first Guangxi Innovation Award, the first prize for scientific and technological progress of Guangxi, the first prize for scientific and technological progress of China Highway Construction Industry Association, the third prize for science and technology of China Highway Society, the national post innovation achievement award of China Seafarers' Construction Alliance, and the major scientific and technological innovation achievements of the Ministry of Transport in 2020.

The road of scientific research, waiting for bloom. For the future, the research team of Guangxi Jiaoke Rubber Asphalt Technology is full of expectations: I hope to maintain the enthusiasm of scientific researchers for innovation and unremitting exploration, and contribute to promoting the green scientific and technological revolution and helping to build a strong transportation country.