Development of nanostructured polymeric systems for soil stabilization and dust control under different environments

Abstract

Within the national economic context, much of the movement of passengers and cargo in Brazil are heavily dependent on road transport. However, the quality of roads and the capacity of the Union, States and Municipalities to recover /rebuild their respective road networks have been the target of harsh criticism of the entire civil society. The most critical step in the recovery process of paving roads is soil stabilization. Several techniques are available for this purpose, but the associated cost, high constraint application in different environments and pollution problems have revealed the importance of development of soil stabilizing systems with a wide spectrum of use, environmentally friendly and inexpensive. In addition, polymeric stabilizers can be widely used in emission control dust from unpaved and gravel roads. This proposal is based on the development of soil stabilization systems from nanostructured polymeric compositions with high and selective compatibility to different soils in the context of Brazilian geodiversity. Methods based on the evaluation of different types of Brazilian soil will be applied in order to determine the correlations between the formulations of the nanostructured stabilizer and mechanical strength, water absorbency and dimensional stability of the samples. The major challenge is the development of a low cost polymeric stabilizer, available with high physical-chemical modification capacity to meet the different types of soil encountered in the country. It is expected that the technical feasibility of the proposal comes against the needs of different economic agents, such as small municipalities, mining, military, agribusiness segment and other industries dependent on local drainage infrastructure for production and people, through the local road network. (AU)