Nypol RE is a newly developed, polymer-modified bitumen with biogenic material that increases the useful life of the pavement while reducing climate impact.
Umeå, the biggest city in the northern part of Sweden, has for many years had problems with poor air quality due to heavy traffic passing through central parts of the city. To meet environmental quality standards, and also to improve road safety and accessibility, a new, 30-kilometre ring road is currently being built around the city.
Reuse, less need for material transport and an extended service life all make deep stabilisation a resource-efficient improvement method.
Using a polymer-modified binder (PMB) that contains biogenic material increases the service life of a pavement while simultaneously reducing the climate impact.
The demands placed on the asphalt pavement on a bridge differ from those that apply for a normal road. Nynas high-performance PMB guarantees a high level of resistance to deformation.
The recently opened Motorcenter Norway offers everything from go-carting to drag racing. Nynas was involved in the project by supplying Nypol HF 105, a polymer-modified bitumen ideal for pavements that are subjected to high stresses.
The Älvsborg Bridge spans the estuary of the Göta Älv river at the entrance to Gothenburg and the biggest port in Scandinavia. The bridge, officially opened in 1966, has a total length of 930 m and a suspended span of 418 m. To guarantee the bridge's functionality and extend its useful life, extensive maintenance work has been under way since 2019, the third and final stage being completed this summer.
Teaming up around tightly scheduled works to upgrade the runway taxiways and apron at Cornwall Newquay Airport, Aggregate Industries and Nynas had to overcome challenging logistical issues. A close working partnership between them saw the project safely landed on time.
Nynas depot in Drammen has expanded PMB capacity in place.
The innovative Dutch company Bitufa Waterproofing's product Flexobit contains only SBS and bitumen and has been sold to customers in over 20 countries. For example, it was used to waterproof the iconic Hotel Atlantis project in Dubai.
The pavement system for a new bridge includes both asphalt and waterproofing. This makes major demands of quality awareness and the ability to coordinate different technologies.
More and more car drivers are complaining about the standard of the roads and demanding better maintenance, primarily on the less trafficked road network. And statistics support them. Costs for car repairs associated with poor road conditions are increasing rapidly.
The global Norwegian industrial group Yara International is the first in the world to use a totally electric container ship in commercial operation. To make the transition from land to sea transport, a new quay facility is being built.
To withstand the loads from heavy vehicles and containers,Piteå Port & Hub in Northern Sweden opted for a polymer modified binder for paving the most heavily used parts of the new port area.
The Finish road network has a total length of 454,000 km. The State-maintained section – 78,000 km – consists of main roads class I and II, motorways and regional and connecting roads. In 2019, approximately 1,800 km of the State-maintained road network were repaved.
Work at the world's largest underground mine has resulted in deformations and crack formations at ground level that are so extensive that parts of the city of Kiruna are having to be relocated. One important project in this transformation is the new 7 km long section of the E10 north of the city.
Although a lot of surface dressing work as well as other roadworks were cancelled during the UK lockdown, one Nynas customer, Hazell & Jefferies Ltd of Oxford, were able to convince their clients that they could keep working safely under the tight restrictions.
The most modern racing circuit in the Nordic region is now ready to host both Formula 1 and MotoGP events. We have paid a visit to the Finnish championship circuit KymiRing.
2013 saw the start of a major construction project – the Ryfylke tunnel, which opened to traffic just in time for the start of the new decade. This is the longest and deepest underground road tunnel in the world – 292 m below sea level – and it forms part of what is known as the Ryfast project.
Playing a key part of the supply chain for a huge road project in England, Nynas delivered more than 20,000 tons of bitumen in time-critical batches, helping to complete the work well ahead of schedule.
After two intensive years, the construction company NCC has finished asphalting the 23 km stretch of the E18 between Arendal and Tvedestrand in southern Norway.
The Danish State is currently building the new Storstrøm Bridge between Zealand and Falster. The bridge, which is part of the planned Fehmarn Belt link between Denmark and Germany, has a budget of approx. EUR 560 million and will open for traffic in 2022.
Skanska has been renovating large parts of the runway at Göteborg Landvetter Airport. Bitumen Matters was there to experience an intensive night of work as renovations progressed.
European route 22 (E22) is no less than 5,320 km long, from Holyhead in the UK via the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden and Latvia to Ishim in Russia. The part of the E22 that runs through Sweden plays a major role for the country’s southern region, not least because of the link to the Copenhagen area. The problem is that the road is very busy and accident-prone, and is also close to residential areas that are affected by noise.
County road 267 in northern Stockholm is an important, busy link between the E4 and the E18. To improve the traffic flow on this section, the contractor Svevia has been hired by the Swedish Transport Administration to widen a 6 km section from one to two lanes in each direction.
High-quality waterproofing of a bridge is generally carried out using mastic asphalt. This is all the more true if there are increased stresses due to climatic conditions or traffic loads. One example is the Punt-Val-Mulinaun arch bridge on the Oberalpstrasse H19 in Graubünden, Switzerland.
In summer 2017, Nynas delivered a carefully chosen PMB grade, Nypol 25, for asphalt layers of a test track.
“Traditional but innovative” might sound like something of a contradiction, but it is actually the formula for a successful asset management strategy for highway maintenance.
Combining a polymer-modified emulsion with two aggregate fractions gives you an especially durable surface. This was one of the main reasons why the contractor Skanska and the Swedish Transport Administration chose to use this technique on a road project in northern Sweden.
Most local authorities in the UK think of cold mix asphalt as a new and relatively untested road construction material. But it has been used successfully in the UK for more than 10 years, including a section of trunk road in Scotland built with a cold mix asphalt base course in 2008.
From this spring until October 2019, NCC will be laying no less than 300 000 tonnes of asphalt on a new section of motorway along the south-eastern coast of Norway.
A successful collaboration between Nynas and volumetric concrete mixer manufacturer Armcon has resulted in a mobile patching machine that can produce cold mix asphalt for repairs and maintenance.
The Hålogaland bridge is located 300 km north of the Arctic Circle, and crosses a fjord by the city of Narvik in northern Norway.
When a new bridge is built it involves major investments, strict quality requirements and an ability to efficiently coordinate different technical teams.
