Adding cooking oil to asphalt to create self-healing roads | Hacker News Reader

Adding cooking oil to asphalt to create self-healing roads

thetimes.com

19 pointszdw22 comments

"They estimate it could prolong the lifespan of roads by 30 per cent."

In my book that barely qualifies as "self-healing." It's a useful addition, and if it's cost-effective it's worth doing, but self-healing (again, to me) implies more than the technical fact of what happens at the micro-level: it implies a technique that maintains the road indefinitely, or at least...2x? 30 percent sounds more like "more durable due to resistance to micro-cracks".

Well, humans are self-healing, but not immortal. 30% increased road lifespan from improved self-repair is quite impressive.

if you think our self-healing capacity only increases our lifespan by 30% you are far off...

Are you disagreeing with the analogy by accident or on purpose? All metaphors and analogies are imperfect. They were refuting the idea that self healing == immortal. Your nitpick over the 30% number doesn’t really diminish that. Or if you’re trying to make a joke, then could you state your support/opposition clearly and independently from your joke please?

How much would our life increase if we got 30% more self healing, though?

We would live probably 30% shorter. More self healing, more replication, more offset in DNA means you reach eldery quicker. Every replication event contain tiny chance of mutation as well.

Cancer comes from mistakes in the self healing process and erosion of the DNA chain. I think it's implicit that 30% more self healing means "30% more self healing correctly" and not "30% more healing for the same amount of injuries". I think the former is also analogous to the road example.

our cancers may get 30% more healing too. so i would say not all that much. i would rather be 30% less accident prone, if that makes sense.

All that said, I, too, would like to reduce my accidents by 30%. Notably around my weak ankles in soccer!

we live in a world of unhinged superlatives, its a lost cause trying to be exact, anywhere outside of actual engineering,and I bet you would eat MY socks, to get a look at something that could plausably increase YOUR self healing, definitions and terms be damned,right,:) 30% is a massive and if true, unprecidented increase in life span for a road surfacing material, and would have profound positive impacts on not just civil engineering, but knock on benifts, for ecological and climate issues

Totally agreed, 30% would be an awesome improvement if true and cost effective, I'm just grousing about the term "self-healing".

Perhaps consider it 'self-healing' as opposed to 'self-remanufacturing'?

Biological wounds often heal with scar tissue which generally prevents the situation from worsening, but is still not as strong as the original undamaged tissue or bone.

If it re-manufactured itself, it'd be as good as the original.

This seems a bit like that, leaking the vegetable oil into the crack, as blood seeps and clots into a cut, then the bitumen and aggregate can flow together in hot days unhindered by the ordinary-occurring oxidization. Still not as good as undamaged, but better.

Seems like an at least good-enough term?

You have to factor in the additional cost of these micro capsules: How hard is it to mix those in on site? What’s the cost to produce them? How fragile are they to work with? Do they hold up in real world conditions?

Traditional methods of resealing roads are effective when done at the right time. It takes proactive maintenance.

Until this is actually tried in the field in real world conditions I’m not holding my breath for this as a successful method.

I was working on project to provide telematics data to local councils from a well known UK car manufacturer.

We could detect pot holes, and poor traction areas of roads through ABS and other sensors on the car. From this we could generate a heatmap of bad areas with potholes.

The idea was good but I think the councils it was shown to weren't interested, it was a sort of shrug we won't fix them anyways. So why pay money for information we won't act upon.

Random tangent - here is a video of Arnold Schwarzenegger fixing a pothole (properly/improperly) in his neighbourhood

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPqUtKQaJFk

> Random tangent - here is a video of Arnold Schwarzenegger fixing a pothole (properly/improperly) in his neighbourhood

Coming from a bit of construction history, it isn't bad work per se (they did use sand on top and a straightening tool), but it isn't up to (German) code either - no compactor in sight and no seam adhesive either. The pothole will re-open rather sooner than later.

Frost free zone, they can enjoy unsealed edges.

The sealant isn't just for water ingress protection but also to have no hard edges that car tires will eventually snatch upon and erode the edges. Using a compactor makes it less likely if done well as well.

Not so much that they won't fix them - they don't have the money to fix them

There are vegetable oils and mineral oils. Some vegetable oils have double bonds(called drying oils - linseed is one and with added catalysts(dryers) makes the furniture varnish we know) drying oils in roads - the drying aspect hardens the road, like slow-slow cured cement - at the cost of brittleness = a tradeoff. So the correct formula of mineral oil/vegetable oil/drying oil = max endurance. vegetable oil = 5-10x the $$ of mineral oils mixes(asphalts). Asphalt is the solid residue of oil fractionation is decanted into 45 gallon drums for trade(but is also bulk shipped in heated tanks , or = tank shaped lump. MacAdam created macadamised roads = a graded mixture of crushed rock from dust to ~.5 inch with the calculated minimum void space. Void space uses up asphalt, so minimum voids. Minimum voids + asphalt = strongest tarmac = well studied. Hot roads = higher melt asphalt needed - or sticky roads.

Previous discussion of another write-up on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42945013

Always a little amazed at the broad range of topics that are studied in such detail.

The article refers to Dr Jose Norambuena-Contreras.Here is a link with some of his publications.

https://www.swansea.ac.uk/staff/j.norambuena/#publications=i...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com