November 19, 2024
Visibuilt Completes Industrial Test: Successful Parking Area Paving with Fermentation-Based Binder at the Fehmarnbelt Tunnel
On September 11th, the Danish start-up Visibuilt, in collaboration with industry partner NCC, successfully paved 18 square meters of road at a tunnel construction site using their innovative fermentation-based binder, visiBIT. This milestone brings Visibuilt closer to its goal of replacing traditional bitumen, a fossil fuel-based binder, with visiBIT, a potential game-changer for the pavement industry that aims to eliminate fossil-based binders.
Large Construction Site Becomes First Movers
Fehmarnbelt Tunnel, Northern Europe’s largest construction initiative — a €7.8 billion endeavor to connect Denmark and Germany —saw potential in being the first construction partner to test out Visibuilt’s fermentation-based binder, visiBIT, with lower energy requirements compared to traditional hot mix asphalt. The contractor FLC at the Fehmarnbelt project construction site in Rødbyhavn provided a test area, hereby becoming early adopters of this technology and enabling Visibuilt to test out visiBIT using traditional paving methods. This collaboration allowed Visibuilt to investigate key success criteria: scaling up visiBIT production, ensuring industry-standard quality, and paving with conventional equipment.
From Laboratory to Fehmarnbelt Tunnel
In preparation for the test, the Visibuilt team produced visiBIT at their laboratory within the Danish Technological Institute. On September 10th, Visibuilt delivered the binder to NCC’s factory in Maribo, where 3 tons of recycled asphalt mixed with visiBIT were produced on the morning of September 11th. Unlike traditional mixes, which require heating up to 180°C, the visiBIT asphalt was produced without adding heat. The mixture was then transported to the tunnel construction site, where 18 square meters of parking area were paved. The section is continuously being monitored for performance while being subjected to traffic loads.
Visibuilt’s Head of Science, Oleksii Rebrov, says:
“The Fehmarnbelt project test is the culmination of many months of preparation. We have pushed ourselves and succeeded in testing visiBIT’s performance on an industrial scale while the product is still in the early development phase. With this crucial understanding from the first real-life field test, we are now ready to finalize visiBIT in the laboratories.”
Test Results
In less than three months, Visibuilt successfully scaled up the production to 300 kilograms of visiBIT, which was integrated into NCC’s asphalt production process. The factory produced 2.6 tons of recycled asphalt using visiBIT with minimal changes to existing procedures. Feedback from NCC workers who paved the tunnel’s outdoor parking area with visiBIT was positive; they noted that the paving process was as easy as using traditional mixes and that it was completed within the same timeframe.
Next Steps
Two research groups participated in the Fehmarn project. The Technical University of Denmark (DTU) will help document the behavior of visiBIT over time. DTU will also conduct field measurements, such as temperature, humidity, and traffic load. Additionally, it will perform tests on extracted specimens in its pavement lab. The University of Copenhagen and the National Research Centre for the Working Environment also took part in the test at Fehmarnbelt project, where they studied the exposure of the NCC workers during paving and will compare the air quality during paving with the visiBIT asphalt to the bitumen-based asphalt. The next steps for Visibuilt are to use the gained knowledge to further improve visiBIT and prepare for future field tests in 2025 and 2026.
This project was conducted in collaboration with NCC, Femern A/S, Femern Link Contractors (FLC), Technical University of Denmark (DTU), the University of Copenhagen (KU), The National Research Centre for the Working Environment (NFA), We Build Denmark, and Erhvervshus Sjælland. The project is part of Erhvervsfyrtårn Femern co-financed by EU and REACT-EU funds, and the Danish Board of Business Development.