First ever 'chip fat' road laid in Bedfordshire

Vegetex, which could replace 20 per cent of the bitumen content in asphalt mixes with waste vegetable oil, is the brain child of Helen Bailey, a PhD student and research manager at Aggregate Industries, a UK supplier of construction and building materials.

Aggregate Industries tested the bitumen replacement in conjunction with Bedfordshire Highways on a residential road in Bedford this week, where 145 tonnes of surface material was laid, 40 tonnes of which was the Vegetex mix.

The asphalt industry currently uses about 1.25 million tonnes of bitumen a year, at a significant cost to the UK trade balance.

Bailey, who this year awarded an Environmental Engineering Award by The Worshipful Company of Engineers, for her paper ‘The Use Of Waste Vegetable Oil As A Bitumen Replacement In Asphalt Mixtures’, says the use of waste vegetable oil as a bitumen replacement offers a number of environmental gains. These include reduced CO2 for the resultant asphalt mixture, less dependency on landfill for disposal of the waste oil and reduce energy use in the storage because it can be stored at lower temperatures.

“The interest Vegetex has received since my award win has been phenomenal and the team at Aggregate Industries is working hard to drive the project forward,” commented Bailey.

Aggregate Industries claims Vegetex has a host of additional technical and economical benefits: the use of waste vegetable oil as a bitumen replacement would reduce the UK’s reliance on expensive imported hydrocarbons therefore assisting the economy; the oil is also easily transported, handled and pumped with no requirement for additional expenditure at existing asphalt production facilities; plus Vegetex complies with all UK standards and, if brought to market, could have a substantial impact on the asphalt industry.

Patents are currently pending for the concept.