KURNOOL: The District Panchayat Raj officials have unanimously opted for polymer-coated bitumen roads (plastic roads) to be laid in the district. Plastic and tar bond well together because both are petroleum products. They constitute the most cost effective combination that is eco-friendly too for roads laying. With the scientific results in their favour, engineers said that plans are afoot to construct plastic roads across the district. The raw material would be plastic waste. This would be the best possible solution to bury the junk on the road with tar and bitumen, they said.
Taking a cue from their Telangana counterparts who had laid half a kilometre road with plastic in Hyderabad, Kurnool district is going to be a pioneer in this technique in Andhra Pradesh. Nellore district had experimented with plastic roads in Andhra Pradesh. Kurnool district, however, was ahead of other districts in the state with concrete plans to use plastic road laying technology. A two kilometre stretch was laid on National Highway 44 at a cost of Rs 1.25 crore from Veludurthi Highway Point to Mallepalli.
Panchayat Raj Superintendent Engineer S. Subbarayudu and Kurnool Executive Engineer Venkata Ramana Reddy jointly inspected the site and said the result was very encouraging. They said the raw material imported from Tamil Nadu cost Rs 45 per kilometre. About 2 tonnes of plastic scrap was used in laying this road. The plastic mixture was available near Alur in the district. Two more roads
There is a proposal to lay plastic roads between Yemmiganur-Adoni Main road to Venkatagiri at a cost of Rs 72 lakh over a stretch of 1.4 kilometres. Another road is planned between Kadimetla in Yemminganur and Siralladoddi at a cost of Rs 1.10 crore to lay a stretch of 3.5 kilometre, they said. The Central Pollution Control Board has undertaken a project with an engineering college in Tamil Nadu to assess and evaluate the performance of polymer coated roads.
Its observations include:
1) The coating of plastics over aggregate improves impact, Los Angels Abrasion and Crushing Value with the increase in the percentage of plastics, 2) The extracted bitumen showed almost near value for Marshall Stability. The road has good skid resistance and texture values.
3) All the stretches in the roads have been found reasonably strong.
4) The unevenness index values of these roads are nearly 3,000 mm/km, which indicate a good surface evenness.
5) The plastic tar roads did not developed any potholes, rutting, ravelling or edge flaw, even after four years.
6) Higher percentage of polymer coating improves the binding strength of the mix.
