Novel vascular self-nourishing and self-healing hollow fibers containing oily rejuvenator for bitumen.

The aim of this work was to prepare and characterize a novel vascular self-nourishing and self-healing hollow fiber containing oily rejuvenator for aged bitumen. The hollow fibers containing oily rejuvenator were fabricated with micropores by a one-step wet-spinning method using polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) resin. Hollow fibers had been successfully prepared based on the test results of morphology, size and chemical structure. The hollow fibers had a good thermal stability with a decomposition temperature of 450 °C. The mechanical properties of fibers satisfied the requirements of use in bituminous materials. Because of the existence of micropores microstructure in fibers, the rejuvenator had the permeability out of fibers. The diffusion behaviors of rejuvenator were also measured by an attenuated total reflection flourier transformed infrared spectroscopy (FTIR-ATR) method. It was found that the diffusion coefficient greatly depended on the pore structure and temperature. A fitting model implied that the diffusion coefficient had a big deviation of Fick’s law and greatly influenced by the pore structure of hollow fibers. It is a guide to design and regulate the microstructure of hollow fibers with appropriate rejuvenator releasing behaviors. All above results implied that the existence of both self-nourishing and self-healing had been successfully proved in aged bitumen using hollow fibers containing oily rejuvenator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]