In the Hérault, we imagine the roads of the future. The department experimented, in 2019, in Montady, with a road that only lights up when a car passes. The same year, he tested, in a parking lot, in Olonzac, a device which makes it possible to use the heat stored by the roadway to heat the building, or produce hot water. At the beginning of spring, it is a coating based on oyster shells which was tested by the department, on a cycle path, in Bouzigues.
But the latest innovation is on the departmental roads of Capestang, Puisserguier, Servian and Espondeilhan. To repair degraded roads, the community uses a “reprocessing machine”. The old road is thus “100% recycled”, thanks to this brand new machine which planes it, and produces a new mixture on the spot, with a simple emulsion based on bitumen and water. Before getting the road back in shape, thanks to this miracle mixture.
“Very beneficial” in terms of CO2 emissions and energy savings
It was the Colas company, in the Hérault, which developed this process. “Normally, we would have excavated the road, then loaded everything into trucks, which would have been evacuated, explains Flavien Dachier, head of the Colas Ouest Hérault agency. Then we would have brought materials to the site, extracted from quarries, again with trucks. »
Thanks to this technique, there is no need for heavy weights to transport the materials, nor for additional resources. “In terms of CO2 emissions and energy savings, it’s very beneficial,” notes Flavien Dachier. Natural resources are also preserved, by not extracting minerals from quarries, and traffic is reduced. Furthermore, the application is done cold, with unheated materials, which represents significant energy gains, and low smoke and CO2 emissions. And it’s cheaper, too: according to the department, this technique lowers the bill by 40% compared to traditional devices.