Shell Bitumes, en route pour le futur

Title: Shell Bitumen Paving Forward Webinar – 22 June 2020

Duration: 44:32 minutes

Description:

Video recording of the Shell Bitumen Paving Forward webinar session on 22^nd June 2020

Shell Bitumen Paving Forward Webinar 22 June 2020 Transcript

[Cover Slide]

SHELL BITUMEN PAVING FORWARD WEBINAR

22 JUNE 2020

[Audio only starts at 1:50 minutes]

[Zhilin Yuan]

Hi everyone, welcome to the Shell Bitumen Centenary Paving Forward webinar series.

[Zhilin Yuan]

My name is Zhilin Yuan, Global Marketing Manager for Shell Bitumen.

[Slide changes]

HSSE: WORKING FROM HOME SAFETY

• CLEAR WALKWAYS & FIRE EXITS
• ERGONOMIC WORKSPACE
• ADEQUATE LIGHTING
• EMERGENCY & EVALUATION PLAN
• CHILD PROOFED
• WORKING SMOKE ALARMS
• FREQUENT SURFACE CLEANING
• STOVE OFF OR ATTENDED

[Zhilin Yuan]

I'll go through some of the administrative details of today's webinar before handing the floor to our speakers and panelists.

[Zhilin Yuan]

Safety is Shell's number one priority, so before we begin, please make sure that you are joining in from a safe place today. You can hear the alarm and are aware of the evacuation procedure in the event of an emergency.

[Zhilin Yuan]

If you are joining in from home, please make sure that the stove is off or attended to, the exit walkway is clear.

[Slide changes]

A QUICK OVERVIEW OF SHELL’S LEGAL DEFINITIONS & CAUTIONARY NOTE

[Zhilin Yuan]

We will not be discussing any commercial sensitive information in today's discussion, nor comment on specific customers or competitors.

[Zhilin Yuan]

All attendees are automatically muted when joining the webinar to minimize interruptions.

[Zhilin Yuan]

Please note that today's session is being recorded.

[Slide changes]

VISUAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR ATTENDEES TO ENABLE THE Q&A AND CHAT FUNCTION ON THE WEBINAR SYSTEM

[Zhilin Yuan]

Throughout today's session you will be able to submit questions through the Q&A function available within the platform.

[Zhilin Yuan]

If you look at the screen right now, you can click on option button which is showing us 1A and tap the Q&A icon indicated as 1B. The Q&A panel box will appear on the right-hand side of your screen as indicated as 1C. You can enter your question and click send.

[Zhilin Yuan]

If you need any help during the session, please use the chat function to send a message to us. Click the chat button as indicated as 2A on the screen. The chat panel box will appear on the right-hand side, which is indicated as 2B.

[Zhilin Yuan]

We will also be using the poll function throughout today's session to gather your inputs. Any submission you make will be anonymous. When the poll opens, it will appear on the right-hand side panel showing us 3A.

[Zhilin Yuan]

To get you familiar with the poll function, we will take the first poll now.

[Zhilin Yuan]

Oops. Can’t open the pool, sorry. Give me one second. I can't open the poll. Apologies, we can't seem to open the poll for you.

[Zhilin Yuan]

That's OK, we'll come back to this in a short while.

[Slide changes]

OVERVIEW OF WEBINAR’S AGENDA

• WELCOME
• SPEECH: THE FUTURE OF ROADS FOR A CHANGING WORLD
• Q&AS WITH SHELL BITUMEN GLOBAL TECHNICAL SPECIALISTS

[Zhilin Yuan]

So let's look at agenda for today. Without further delay, I would like to invite Jason Wong to share a few words. Jason is the vice president for Shell Specialties and lead Shell Bitumen and Sulfur Global business. Jason, over to you.

[Slide changes]

PICTURE OF PROFESSSOR JASON WONG (VICE PRESIDENT SHELL SPECIALITIES (BITUMEN & SULPHUR)

[Jason Wong]

Thank you Zhilin. Good morning, Good afternoon, good evening everyone. Welcome to the webinar today.

[Jason Wong]

It's really great to see the number of participants in this call. I know that you're dialing in from different parts of the world, so I'm sure that this will be a great interactive session today.

[Jason Wong]

Now before we start the webinar, I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the support you have given to us during the COVID 19 period. The COVID 19, pandemic has been really challenging for all of us, both professionally and personally. It is very important that we continue to work closely together to manage these situations.

[Jason Wong]

Now for me, many of you will know that I live in Shanghai. China, being the first country, which experienced the lock down, it’s really tough. My family and I had to stay at home for more than 10 weeks.

[Jason Wong]

The situation is getting better now. I would say that it's still not 100% there, but it's much improved.

[Jason Wong]

Now I know that you live in different countries and you may be experiencing now in different phases of the pandemic. I sincerely hope that you will continue to keep safe and healthy.

[Jason Wong]

Now, as for this webinar, this is really marking a take off of, you know, a series of virtual engagement.

[Jason Wong]

We have only one objective in mind which is about staying connected with all of you through this kind of virtual dialogue for meaningful subjects around our industry. Key trends, opportunities and challenges.

[Jason Wong]

Most of you will know that you know we have been working in the industry trying to develop innovative solution in both products and services in order to make road paving more efficient, last longer and have greater durability.

[Jason Wong]

Now year 2020 is a very very special year for us because we have started our scale production of bitumen as Shell Haven refinery in the UK 100 years ago.

[Jason Wong]

And this is really, you know a unique moment. Partnering with customers like you really make

[Jason Wong]

us grow and now we are the world largest international bitumen marketer and we operate in more than 52 markets in the world.

[Jason Wong]

Now to commemorate the centenary I would really like to share with you a video which shows the 100 year history of Shell Bitumen.

[Shell Bitumen Centenary Video is played]

VIDEO AND TRANSCRIPT PROVIDED HERE: https://www.shell.com/shellbitumen100.html

[Jason Wong]

Thank you everyone and thank you again for being an integral part of our hundred years of history. I feel really proud of that.

[Jason Wong]

Now obviously this is not the end of the story, as we will obviously continue working with you and continue this journey. It's important that we continue to work together to be innovative and really working on developing some new products and solutions for the future world.

[Jason Wong]

I hope you will enjoy the session today and I really encourage you to be participative in putting forward your questions.

[Slide changes]

PICTURE OF PROFESSSOR JOHN READ (GENERAL MANAGER SHELL SPECIALITIES TECHNOLOGIES)

[Jason Wong]

I'm now going to hand over the time to my colleague, Professor John Read and he's the GM of Shell Specialties Technologies.

[Jason Wong]

He will be no stranger to anyone of you. And John has already join us in Shell for over 20 years and he has been very instrumental in leading the development of product and services and solutions in this industry. And many of you will also know that he published the very famous Shell Bitumen Handbook and I understand it’s now already the 6th addition.

[Jason Wong]

Now, without any further ado, over to you, John.

[John Read]

Thank you, Jason and welcome everyone. Now I've met hundreds of customers over the years, including many of you on this call, but this is the first time I'm speaking to so many of you at the same time over a virtual platform, which for me and I hope for you, is very exciting.

[John Read]

The world is changing fast and continue to evolve at a pace never seen before. On top of that, the world's population is growing at a rapid pace with urbanization as a clear megatrend, and we're seeing global growth in transport networks.

[John Read]

At Shell, we look at these changes closely as they are important to our businesses globally, including the bitumen business.

[John Read]

Now road infrastructure is essential to modern living, but urbanization and denser transport and industrial

activity have resulted in worsening levels of local air quality. The need for cleaner construction and transport infrastructure requires every industry, including ours, to do its part, and so the question that comes to my mind is what else can we do with roads other than fulfilling their primary purpose of moving goods and people from A to B?

[John Read]

In addition, roads must get better at what they do, as congestion is already a major concern for our cities, and the damage to our roads will inevitably increase.

[John Read]

Consequently, roads need to last longer and be designed to be durable as well as being cleaner. Whether it's reduced odors or neutralize it, reduce emissions during paving, to incorporate more recycle material, or to have a lower carbon footprint.

[John Read]

Jason mentioned the COVID-19 pandemic over the last few months, and this has also presented new challenges and opportunities to our industry as countries have shut borders and enforced lockdowns.

[John Read]

We have seen road construction activities slowed or fully halted. And while some governments have pledged continued commitment to road investments, others have understandably diverted funds from infrastructure construction to Healthcare.

[John Read]

The pandemic is also driven a significant change in the way people are connecting, such as this webinar and the new, and indeed the way that they are commuting.

[John Read]

As many countries start to enter the recovery phase and begin to kick start their economic recovery. We need to get the message out there that roads are the arteries through which economy pulses the links, producers that links producers to markets, workers jobs, students to school and the sick to hospitals.

[John Read]

Roads play a vital role in the global economic recovery. Now all these facts represent unique challenges and opportunities for us in road industry and we need to ask ourselves how can we build better roads that will last longer? How can we make our roads safer? How can we build roads more efficiently and use less energy? How can we build roads, tunnels, and airports that reduce energy consumption and how can we build roads that have a significant reduced impact on environment?

[Slide changes]

PICTURE OF SHELL GLOBAL TECHNICAL SPECIALISTS:

• PROFESSSOR JOHN READ (GENERAL MANAGER SHELL SPECIALITIES TECHNOLOGIES)
• DAVID STRICKLAND (GLOBAL PROJECTS AND MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGY MANAGER)
• FRANK BEER (REGIONAL TECHNOLOGY MANAGER – EUROPE)
• DAWID D'MELO (PORTFOLIO IMPLEMENTATION MANAGER)
• RICHARD TAYLOR (GLOBAL TECHNICAL DEVELOPMENT MANAGER)

[John Read]

In today's webinar, I'm pleased to have my team with global technical specialists with me for interactive discussion of our experiences and learnings in addressing these challenges.

[John Read]

So firstly I would like to introduce David Strickland. David looks after the manufacturing of bitumen and all of our refineries as well as blending in all of our depot's around the world and also looks after several other major projects. He's worked for Shell for many, many years and has been part of this industry for more than 30 years. So thank you David for being part of the panel.

[John Read]

Next is Richard Taylor. Richard will be known to many of you and he is my technology development manager. He looks after the transition from taking up something from research and development into the market. He also looks after sustainability as well as intellectual property and product management. So thank you Richard for joining us.

[John Read]

Next, we have Frank Beer. Frank is my regional technology manager for Europe and so he looks after everything from the technical service end of things through to all of the work that we do in our solution center in Strasbourg and he is incredibly experienced, longstanding member of the team and has been with Shell for many years now as well as in the industry prior to that.

[John Read]

And lastly, but certainly not least, is David D’ Melo. David looks after the R&D in Bangalore, runs the whole team, all of the projects that we run there that develop all the projects that we bring to market. The most recent of which that you've probably all heard about, is Shell Bitumen FreshAir. So again, welcome David and thank you for joining us.

[John Read]

So as you can see, our panel today represents knowledge from different geographical and technical areas, so please take this opportunity to share what's on your mind. I look forward to your active participation to make the next 30 minutes exciting and meaningful.

[John Read]

And so normally at this point I would be asking you a polling question, but as that functionality does not work. What I would like you to do is to think about the following subjects when you're asking more questions. So extending the service life of roads. Why do we have a lack of skilled workforce? Are raw material supply disruption is going to be an issue for us? Reduced environmental impact of roads. Reduced funding for road works. Increasing road maintenance requirements and recycling bitumen and asphalt and if none of those fits the challenges that you are facing, please let us know what subjects are particularly on your mind through either the chat box or through the Q&A box.

[John Read]

So thank you very much for sharing your questions with us. Hopefully we can help you in finding solutions to address some of the challenges that you are facing.

[John Read]

And we will use all of the information from the questions that you ask in order to be able to help us shape the rest of this webinar series. To ensure that we're discussing what you want to hear about.

[John Read]

Now let's take some of the questions that we have received already.

[John Read]

So the first question is what are we doing? Sorry too, I've lost my place in where's the question, sorry.

[John Read]

Sorry, what are we doing to increase the recyclability of bitumen? My apologies, lost my place, David. I think that this one is for you David D’Melo.

[David D’Melo]

Thank you very much John. I was hoping that you would call me to address this question. I find it very interesting question for the simple reason that I think we're quite fortunate to already be part of an industry that by nature is actually very circular now I don't need to tell you on the call that we at the end of pavement life, we use the reclaimed asphalt mixtures and we make new pavements out of that.

[David D’Melo]

Right, and we see a lot of reports across regions and countries of the huge amount of the reclaimed RAP material that's used to make new pavement so extremely circular.

[David D’Melo]

The question then arises. What can we do to increase the sustainability of the certain pavements? And then we come to how do we get longer lasting pavements that have incorporated RAP materials in there?

[David D’Melo]

So yes, we've got certain solutions in the market today, for example, Cariphalte RC

[David D’Melo]

But then the challenge we ask ourselves is can we do more? And that is indeed the question that we asked ourselves, and so we're using the knowledge that we have of bitumen, of aged bitumen. To see if we can work on solutions and technologies that, in combination with the RAP material, will result in a pavement that will address the needs of tomorrow, be traffic loading climatic and result in a pavement that lasts even longer, so having a more sustainable industry. In addition to a very circular one. Thank you.

[John Read]

Thank you David.

[John Read]

So the next question which has come through and by the way we ran a webinar this morning and I was asked to read the questions twice to make sure that everybody heard them. So I'll do that from now on.

[John Read]

So the next question is, is Shell developing high performing product for mastic asphalt or bitumen emulsions? So that is shell developing high performing products for mastic asphalt or bitumen emulsions and as we have Frank Beer for Europe on the line, I'll address this to Frank.

[Frank Beer]

Yeah, thanks a lot.

[Frank Beer]

Mastic asphalt and emulsions have one thing in common. They don't like changes.In China and Asia, for example, we are actively producing emulsions already. So we know what you're talking about.

[Frank Beer]

We are constantly looking for additive in our R&D lab in Bangalore. Which helped to compensate changes implied by the nature of the aggregate or by the nature of the bitumen.

[Frank Beer]

Mastic asphalt, especially when it comes to indoor flooring within each product.

[Frank Beer]

However, we successfully enabled the mastic asphalt with industry in Germany to continue with the production of mastic asphalt by developing low temperature solutions for them.

[Frank Beer]

Emulsion market in Europe is quite diverse. There are some countries where emulsions have quite a big market share like France. In other countries there is very low demand for emulsions.

[Frank Beer]

Where as Shell doesn't produce emulsions in Europe, we are in constant contact with additive suppliers to further improve quality of emulsions. Thanks.

[John Read]

Thank you Frank.

[John Read]

You’re not going to get off the hook quite so easily because the next question also is going to fall to you.

[John Read]

Let me read this twice to make sure everybody hears the question. So right road maintenance is increasingly an issue for cities to manage. What are some learnings Shell can share to overcome the challenge in maintaining the roads and highways.

[John Read]

That’s road maintenance is increasingly an issue for our cities to manage. What are some of the learnings that Shell can share on overcoming the challenges in maintaining the roads and highways?

[Frank Beer]

Yeah, thanks for the question. So from my point of view the best maintenance is no maintenance. When we enabled the asphalt industry to pave roads, which last longer, maintenance is less of an issue as maintenance intervals can be increased.

[Frank Beer]

There are solutions to make road last longer. For example the use of polymer modified bitumen. All special asphalt mix designs but specification plays a role here as well.

[Frank Beer]

What we consider to be a high performing polymer modified bitumen is not necessarily allowed in each country, that's due to specification, so the specification might not fit, and that's a real shame.

[Frank Beer]

Another thing is of course cost when building a road using conventional bitumen is cheaper than using polymer modified bitumen. But this is only true for the initial costs. In the long run and economically speaking, using high quality ingredients is cheaper at these ingredients can make the road last longer. Thanks a lot.

[John Read]

Thanks Frank and actually, just the way that these questions have come in the next one also falls to you. Hopefully will get somebody else to turn in a moment, but so the question is, when is Shell FreshAir in all grades available (also PEN from MIRO and Godorf)? So that's when is Shell FreshAir in all grades available (also PEN from MIRO and Godorf)?. And just for everybody's understanding, MIRO and Godorf are two of our production facilities in Europe. So Frank over to you.

[Frank Beer]

That's absolutely correct. So we are just implementing the manufacturing of Shell Bitumen FreshAir at the Shell owned refinery in Cologne in Godorf. We are confident to be ready to supply Shell Bitumen FreshAir

Godorf beginning of next season.

[Frank Beer]

As most of you probably know, MIRO is a joint venture refinery and we need to request some changes at the side to enable the manufacturing of Shell Bitumen FreshAir. We are in close contact with the MIRO bitumen team and we hope to launch Shell Bitumen FreshAir at the back end of next year or beginning of 2022. Thanks for question.

[John Read]

Thanks Frank.

[John Read]

So the next question, Frank, will be relieved to know that he's not going to get this one is what is the future of bitumen production in a world where refinery capacity is likely to come under significant pressure? So I said that again, what is the future of bitumen production in a world where refinery capacity is likely to come under significant pressure?

[John Read]

So I'll have a go at answering this to start with, and then I'll ask David Strickland to come in and pick up anything that I missed.

[John Read]

And so whilst we cannot speak for any other refiner, we can only really talk about Shell and the trends that we see in the marketplace. So Shell decided sometime ago that it was going to invest quite heavily in bitumen production where it made sense that it's major locations and so to that end we have centered all bitumen production in major refineries in the Shell Group.

[John Read]

They've all had significant investment in terms of the quality, quantity and the rate ability of the production. And in fact, that investment continues with three more major investments ongoing at the current time. Now we also see that around the world production is becoming more and more disconnected from demand centers.

[John Read]

For example, you know in northwest Europe.It used to belong in terms of Bitumen. There was an oversupply situation and from this season going forward, what we see is that northwest Europe in the height of the season will become short. And so you know our view on this is that you know our customers need to think very hard around contracting as early as possible with their chosen suppliers.

[John Read]

That will become ever more important to ensure that you have the grades that you require when you require them. All of the time. We also see that there is some change in quality around the world, particularly with the implementation of the IMO sulfur specification.

[John Read]

You know whether that's whether that's positive or negative in the in the long term remains to be seen, but I think that are allowed David Strickland to answer a little bit more of that question, David.

[David Strickland]

Thanks John, can you hear me OK?

[David Strickland]

Yeah, for a moment I thought I was on an audience with Frank Beer.

[David Strickland]

Yeah, so the IMO specification, alot of people in the industry have seen the change in the IMO specification as a threat to bitumen quality. And I think the reason for that is a lot of the residues that enf up being in the fuel oil in high sort of fuel oil, They’re worried will end up as part of bitumen because they don't have the same qualities as a as a good bitumenn residue thus.

[David Strickland]

And like you're saying, I can't speak for other bitumen suppliers, and bitumen manufacturers. But what I can say about Shell Bitumen supply chain is that we have full visibility from taking the crude oil out of the ground, refining it, processing it. We have visibility across those conditions. We select the crudes that is a good bitumen. And we see that visibility all the way to deliver it to the customer.

[David Strickland]

Now, in terms of what IMO has, the changes made to Shell Bitumen supply chain, they have made no difference whatsoever. We are still using the residues that gives good quality bitumen that meets the specification and is aligned with the product stewardship requirements that we have.

[David Strickland]

Back to you John.

[John Read]

Thanks David.

[John Read]

So the next question, and Richard I'm going to address this to you first and then to David D’Melo.

[John Read]

Are there any new solutions to increase the life of asphalt in pavements? So that's are there any new solutions to increase the life of asphalt in pavements?

[Richard Taylor]

Thanks John.

[Richard Taylor]

So interesting question. I mean at the moment I think it's about to say that polymer modified bitumen is probably the state of the art in terms of trying to extend the life of the pavement. That's not to say everything resides in a purely technical solution in terms of, there's still quite a lot of mileage and proper design and proper execution of the work. There are some ways that you could maybe extend what is today possible using polymer modified bitumen and we have been looking at what else our polymer modified bitumen in ways we can slow down the damage mechanisms so water polymer does a very very good job and the bitumen itself in terms of arresting the distress that gets put on the pavement overtime.

[Richard Taylor]

There is a natural degradation in the properties as a result of environmental exposure and aging of the road, and there are some potential avenues to explore in terms of preserving the properties that arrest that distress over the lifetime of road, and so in terms of new solutions. At the moment, I would say that problem modified bitumen still remains the state of the art, but we are actively working and moving towards full scale trials of Technologies which can prolong the age of what we have today.To prolong the properties overtime from the solutions that we have today.

[Richard Taylor]

And though David, if you've got anything to add. Without telling everybody what we're doing.

[David D’Melo]

Thank you, thank you. We are working. We are working on something. But yeah, we've got. We've got to try and move at some point away from what we can achieve with PMV. Yes, I think you've you've you've covered it quite well Richard. The only thing I would say again without giving getting into the details of what we're doing is that basically what we're trying to do is to enhance the performance of a PMB. So in combination with the polymer modified bitumen, you get that durability that that comes with and more so as Richard said that it's probably a placeholder for future developments and future conversations with some of you on the call. Thank you.

[John Read]

Thanks both.

[John Read]

So the next question that we have is how will Shell meet their net zero carbon emission targets processing heavy crudes, or bituminous products? So that's how how will Shell meet their net zero carbon emission targets processing heavy crudes, or bituminous products?

[John Read]

And I'll have a go at this first, and then then I'll ask Richard is truly are experts on this area to step in and provide any corrections to mistakes that I made. So, so the first one that we will do is that we will address our scope one and two missions in our own plants and refineries. And this work I can tell you is already very well underway. Next we will look at our product and service portfolio and adapt this to avoid emissions in the first place. We will also work with external bodies to ensure that our industry is looked at in the right way. So for example, if we look at this on a consequential basis then we sequester carbon in the roads and provided that its not burnt at the end of life. And so, therefore, that carbon is never released into the atmosphere. And Lastly, you know, once we've done all the other things, if we still have a carbon positive situation, we will look at nature based solutions. And in all of those steps that I've just mentioned, we will also ensure that all the claims we make with regards our carbon footprint and avoided missions are independently verified. So Richard, perhaps anything you'd like to add or clarify.

[Richard Taylor]

Not too much to actually John, I think. Yeah, there's two parts to the story. Is you say if I just summarized that we have to take care of our own emissions, and by that we mean the electricity we use in the fuel we burn our own plants, which is something that we already started to work on. Now for a few years. And we also need to collaborate with our supply chain to reduce our emissions in terms of the additives that we buy in terms of the transport that we procure, how we could move things around. And on the other side of the sort of the choices of the products that we make in terms of longer products, we will lean quite heavily on the circular economy by that I don't necessarily mean recycling. Which is first thing that springs to mind with the circular economy, but the full range of principles of the circular economy of keeping materials in service for a longer period through a combination of durability and just discussed, but also in terms of maintaining those products in in situ for as long as possible and then for minimizing the need for energy and resource is at the end of life. Also using secondary materials or other ways says materials and so on. The kind of footprint side is clear, we need to decarbonize right across the chain and then in terms of our product mix and if you want to call it hand print and those kind of fashionable term but if we will look at their hand print we have to look at the product mix that we make and the impact that has on our customers in terms of sustainability.

[John Read]

Thanks, Richard.

[John Read]

OK, so the next question that we've had come in and thank you by the way, for all of these questions, there are very challenging for us to answer. So with current funding available, what are the best options to consider to extend the service life of roads? So again, with current funding available, what are the best options to consider to extend the service life of roads?

[John Read]

Now all the I'll take this one, but if any of the team wants to jump in when I'm when I'm finished and add anything that would be great. You know, so far perspective any technology that extends the life of the road before major reconstruction is great from both fiscal and from an environmental point of view.

[John Read]

There are a number of different techniques, will just touch on some of them. High quality pothole repairs is certainly one. But when the client repairs these potholes, they often fail again within weeks or months of having the pothole fixed. And so it's very important that the client actually looks at and understand what is causing the potholes in the 1st place. Now, if it's just local segregation of the actual material you know, then that is something where you can just clean material out, but new fresh material back in and it should be very good fixed. But if it's a soft spot underneath, then you know if you just repair the pothole and don't repair the underlying cause, then the hotel will reoccur.

[John Read]

And I think you know it's also very good to talk a little bit at this point in time about something called into interspatial repeatability. This was a term that was coined by Cambridge University when they did a lot of work looking at with weigh in motion Maps and looking at how damage actually occur on roads and what they discovered was that very often where you have localized failure, it was nothing to do with the locality of the failure itself. It was always to do with an event somewhere further back along with pavement of bump failed, gully grade or drain that caused the suspension of the heavy vehicles to bounce.

[John Read]

Now what they also found is that heavy goods, vehicles in matter, what type it was, all have a body bounce of about 3 hertz. So they bounce the same rate. And when they measured the impact loading of those, are those bouncing bodies. They found that it was about three times the static loading of the vehicle. Now for those of you that believe in the 4th power law, what that says to us is that you know if you do three times. If you have three times to keep loading, then you could do anything up to 81 times the damage with that single vehicle, and so that repeated dynamic loading hitting the same spot because the bodies are bouncing same frequency and the trucks that generally speaking traveling along the road at the same pace means that you can get very localized failure, and so if you don't go back and fix the event, the bump or the loose gully grade or whatever it might happen to be then your material will just continue to fail time after time. And so that was some very interesting research that was done at Cambridge University.

[John Read]

Other solutions that can help us extend the life of roads, certainly surface dressing to give back texture and to seal cracks. Crack sealing itself is very effective to stop water ingress and as you know if you get water into a pavement it accelerates the total failure of the pavements incredibly quickly. And so, keeping them waterproof is very, very important. So crack sealing needs is a very good one.

[John Read]

Microsurfacing, which will allow you to re texture your cracks and also address very minor deformations is another very effective technique that can be utilized in order to extend pavement line.

[John Read]

And lastly one that we're seeing quite a lot here in the UK is changing the speed limits so if you've got a file strode and you're starting to see some cracking some failures and defamation, what you can actually do is downgrade the speed of the road. You know this makes it still safe for people to utilize the road. Maybe not as convenient.

[John Read]

Problem with that is that it doesn't address the underlying structural integrity of the road, and actually, you know may cause higher costs in the long run. But in the short term it is 1 possible solution, so I don't know if anybody else on the panel wants to jump in and add anything.

[John Read]

If not, we can go to the next question. I think Richard this one will be for you.

[John Read]

Which is what is Shell's view on the use of plastic waste into asphalt mixture for roads. So I’ll say that again what is Shell’s view on the use of plastic waste in asphalt mixtures for roads. Richard?

[Richard Taylor]

Yeah thanks, it’s still a very hot topic. I would say lot of questions around this. I think that in principle it doesn't really matter what we're talking about here. I mean, plastic is just one example of secondary material which large volume industry like asphalt is going to be attractive to a lot of people. We've seen that over the years with all manner of things, I guess that end of used tires, being the most well known example. I think that anything that we bring into the asphalt supply chain or anything that we put into the bitumen that then goes on spin the asphalt supply chain has to meet certain given criteria and that needs to be things that really quite sensible things like it shouldn't cause any harm to the environment or any increase in exposure for workers. It shouldn't compromise recyclability at the end of its life it shouldn't have an adverse effect on performance of the road, and so actually I think a lot of these things they need to be assessed through the same framework regardless of whether there are ways, plastics or any material actually that needs to. Be used in the pavement, and so I'm not going to offer a specific opinion on waste plastic, although if you push me properly, I’ll be happy to. But actually I think you have to assess everything with that kind of a straight kind of framework so you have to have a clear set of criteria as to why you're doing it and that needs to include.

[Richard Taylor]

Also, of course you can't footprint of the of the solution, so if it doesn't matter end to end if it doesn't actually lead to a more sustainable solution and then we should clearly shouldn't be doing it and so things need to be assessed in the kind of structural clear fashion I would say and plastic waste plastics are no different to any other material in that regard.

[John Read]

Excellent, thank you very much, Richard. I think we're just about coming to the end of our time so I will take this opportunity to wrap up, but please don't worry if we haven't managed to get to your question. What we will do is we will take all of the unanswered questions from this session as well as from webinar that we held this morning and we'll put them into a document and make that available to you. So, so thank you. Thank you all for the questions you have shared.

I certainly feel and hope that you do too, that it's been a fantastic discussion. I hope that we've been able to provide you with Shell’s perspective on some of the opportunities and challenges for the industry and have begun to show that innovation and close collaboration are paramount if we are to achieve tangible solutions to meet both current and future needs as an industry, more so than ever before, we must work together to prepare for this fast changing world.

[John Read]

So I, on behalf of all of us at Shell Bitumen look forward to a continued collaboration with you to pay forward to a sustainable future, and I'll now pass to Zhilin to close the session. Thank you very much.

[Zhilin Yuan]

Thank you John. We have come to the end of today's session. Thank you for your participation. Please complete the post event survey to let us know of your feedback. If you enjoy today's webinar, you'll be pleased to know that this is the first in a series of webinars that we plan to run throughout the rest of the 2020 and beyond, so please, lookout for updates and invitations. We look forward to seeing you again at our future events. Goodbye for now.

Title: Shell Bitumen Paving Forward Webinar – 19 August 2020

Duration: 1:02:14

Description:

Video recording of the Shell Bitumen Paving Forward webinar session on 19^th August 2020

Shell Bitumen Paving Forward Webinar 19^th August 2020 Transcript

[Cover Slide]

SHELL BITUMEN PAVING FORWARD WEBINAR

19 AUGUST 2020

EXTENDING THE LIFE OF ROADS – THE BEST MAINTENANCE IS NO MAINTENANCE

[Prianka Krishnamurthy]

Hello everybody, we are about to begin right now. Welcome to the Shell Bitumen Paving Forward webinar series. We hope you have all been very well. This is the second installation of a series of engagements we have designed with you, our partners in mind.

[Prianka Krishnamurthy]

My name is Prianka Krishnamurthy and I'm the Global Brand & Communications Manager for Shell Bitumen. Before I hand over the floor to our panelists, let me just run through some of the housekeeping details for today's webinar.

[Slide changes]

HSSE: WORKING FROM HOME SAFETY

• CLEAR WALKWAYS & FIRE EXITS
• ERGONOMIC WORKSPACE
• ADEQUATE LIGHTING
• EMERGENCY & EVALUATION PLAN
• CHILD PROOFED
• WORKING SMOKE ALARMS
• FREQUENT SURFACE CLEANING
• STOVE OFF OR ATTENDED

[Prianka Krishnamurthy]

Safety is Shell's number one priority, so we do ask you to please make sure that you're joining in from a safe place. You can hear the alarm and you are aware of the evacuation procedure in the event of an emergency. If you are joining from home, please make sure that the stove is turned off or attended to and that your exit walkway is clear.

[Slide changes]

A QUICK OVERVIEW OF SHELL’S LEGAL DEFINITIONS & CAUTIONARY NOTE

[Prianka Krishnamurthy]

Just a quick reminder as well. We will not be discussing any commercial sensitive information in today's discussion, nor comment on specific customers or competitors.

[Prianka Krishnamurthy]

And so please note that today's session is being recorded for our own use.

[Slide changes]

VISUAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR ATTENDEES TO ENABLE THE Q&A AND CHAT FUNCTION ON THE WEBINAR SYSTEM

[Prianka Krishnamurthy]

You will notice that all attendees are automatically muted when joining. This is to minimize interruptions, however, throughout today's session we do encourage you to submit your questions using the Q&A function available within the platform. This will enable the panelist to answer as many questions that they are able to within this one hour.

[Prianka Krishnamurthy]

To do this you will need to click the options button at the bottom of your screen. You'll see three dots shown in 1A and tap the Q&A icon that's 1B until it turns blue. You will then see the Q&A panel box appear on the right-hand side. That is 1C. You can then enter your questions and click send.

[Prianka Krishnamurthy]

If you do need any help during the session, please do use the chat function to send a direct message to us. Click the chat button, which is 2A, the chat panel box will appear on the right-hand side which is 2B and then enter your questions in 2C.

[Prianka Krishnamurthy]

We will also be using a poll function during today's session to gather your inputs. Any submissions you make will be anonymous. When the poll opens, it will appear on the right hand side panel 3A so let's try taking a poll now.

[Prianka Krishnamurthy]

It's always good to see where everybody is from so, let's kick start that.

[Prianka Krishnamurthy]

You will see a poll on your right-hand side right now.

[A Poll question is presented to the audience]

PLEASE LET US KNOW WHICH PART OF THE WORLD YOU ARE DIALING FROM?

(ASIA, AUSTRALIA, MIDDLE EAST, AFRICA, EUROPE, NORTH AMERICA, SOUTH AMERICA)

[Prianka Krishnamurthy]

Thanks for that. It's always good to see a good mix of people from different parts of the world and we're very, very happy to have you today.

[Slide changes]

OVERVIEW OF WEBINAR’S AGENDA

• WELCOME & INTRODUCTION
• MARKET INSIGHT (ASIA & CHINA)
• Q&A WITH SHELL BITUMEN GLOBAL TECHNICAL SPECIALISTS

[Prianka Krishnamurthy]

So just a quick overview of our today's agenda. We will have a quick welcome and introduction and then we'll go into a market insight specifically for our Asia and China and then will kick start the Q&A with our Shell global technical specialists.

[Slide changes]

PICTURE OF PROFESSSOR JOHN READ (GENERAL MANAGER SHELL SPECIALITIES TECHNOLOGIES)

[Prianka Krishnamurthy]

Without further delay, I would like to invite Professor John Read, our General Manager of Shell Specialties Technology, to help set the scene for us in the topic of extending the longevity of roads. John is certainly no stranger to the Bitumen industry, and many of you. He first joined Shell over 20 years ago and has been at the forefront of developing innovative bitumen products ever since. John is also the man behind a very detailed Shell Bitumen Handbook which is now into its 6th edition. John over to you please.

[John Read]

Thanks Prianka and Hi everybody. And for those of you that attended the first in the webinar series, welcome back and to everybody else, welcome and I hope you really enjoy this event and want to attend the rest of the series.

[John Read]

In this first webcast, which was, uh, ah excuse me in the first webcast, which was an ask us anything session, everybody clearly indicated that you want to discuss more about today's particular topic of maintenance and durability. In other words, making roads last longer. And so here we are today. In addition, we've decided to make the second web a little more interactive, as all the questions in the first webinars were sent before the event. This time you get to ask your questions live and hopefully will be able to give you some some good answers. On top of this, we also want to celebrate Shell Bitumen’s first 100 years in the industry and to this end, I'm just going to take a few minutes to run through some of our achievement over this period.

[Slide changes]

AN OVERVIEW OF SHELL BITUMEN’S JOURNEY MAP FROM 1920 TO 2020

[John Read]

So this all began in 1920. In actual fact, it began in 1919. Shell Haven refinery in the UK when we first ever produce Bitumen, but then during the end of 1919 we scaled up and in 1920 we started first proper commercial production of Bitumen and we have been producing bitumen ever since, so 100 years of continuous production.

[John Read]

Taking a step forward in a decade in 1937, Fraas, working in our laboratories in Amsterdam, Amsterdam. Sorry, known by some of you with KSLA, developed the cold blending test for Bitumen, which is still in use today. Everybody refers to it as the Fraas Test, and it was the first indicator of the cold temperature performance of Bitumen.

[John Read]

Then in 1949, we produced the 1st edition of the Shell Bitumen Handbook. Sorry, so if somebody trying to get hold of me, can you hear me OK?

[John Read]

Prianka, can I just check.

[Prianka Krishnamurthy]

Yes John loud and clear.

[John Read]

So sorry sorry sorry there was lots of pinging noises going on and I wasn't sure whether or not somebody who's trying to speak to me.

[John Read]

So in 1949 we actually produced the 1st edition of the Shell Bitumen Handbook, which was what Prianka mentioned, which was actually then a pamphlet of just a few pages long which is now blossomed into the 6th edition of the Shell Bitumen Handbook, which numbers nearly 800 pages and I'm currently considering whether I and the team are going to start writing the 7th edition in the coming years, so you know, listen out for that.

[John Read]

Then moving forward another decade in 1954, very, very important piece of work was done by Van der Poel. He developed the Van der Poel's nomograph which is, you know, still used today and was the first demonstration of the connection between stiffness, time and temperature when loading a bitumen sample. From this nomograph and the original work that was done by Pfeiffer and Van Doormaal in 1936 we developed the bitumen test data chart, which is something that many people still use today to calculate equitas temperatures of bitumen and in particular, the mixing and compaction temperatures that we use on our plants and our paving.

[John Read]

One small interesting point of note, Van der Poel became very, very famous world famous because of his nomograph but in actual fact he was a lubricant person and he only worked in Bitumen for two years and in those two years he produced that fantastic piece of work so it was it was quite exceptional.

[John Read]

And then building up on all of that work around measuring performance of Bitumen, in 1963, Shell developed the first analytical pavement design tools in SPDM, so the Shell Pavement Design Method. These are and bands which are still in use today and form the basis of many design methodologies around the world.

[John Read]

1973 and I'm just picking out some of the red ones here. Not going to go through all of this, you know? We had the first documented full-scale trial, so SBS Modified Bitumen. A technology that is in use today and in fact is growing at perhaps the fastest ever rate, and I'm sure that something that we will pick up and talk about later on in the call. But not only did Shell developed the first polymer modified bitumen, we also developed the polymer that went into that. So the SBS that went into the bitumen was developed by Shell.

[John Read]

And then in 1985 we patented Mexphalte C, that was a development from the original synthetic pigmentable binder that we developed that was then known as ColourAdd and that was back in 1968. Mexphalte C has gone from strength to strength. We now have polymer modified versions of it, low temperature versions of it, and you know trying to blend the aesthetics of the road network in with the surroundings. It's becoming ever more important and demarking areas on the road, whether it's for pedestrians, cyclists, buses, you know, heavy goods vehicles, normal cars, you know is becoming ever more important as our road become ever more congested.

[John Read]

Again, moving forward another decade in 1998, we did our Cariphalte RC. RC stands for recycling, which was a means to be able to recycle a PMB modified asphalt back into a PMB modified asphalt. So this was the first real examples of being truly circular. If you recycle modified material and it goes back into just a conventional material, then actually you're losing value and that's not truly circular. It may be, you know, from a sustainability standpoint, it's better than taking it to waste, but not truly circular. When you’re truly circular you recycle things back into the same product as they came out of, or even upcycle them so that they go back into a higher application.

[John Read]

Then 2003 based upon the early work that we've done to take in the 90s, into WAM foam so that was warm asphalt mixture and a foaming technology. We developed our low temperature binders whole different range of those, enabling temperature reductions of up to 30 to 40 degrees centigrade, very particularly important in terms of costs because they reduce fuel usage. Now increasingly important because of sustainability because less fuel usage means less emissions to atmosphere, that’s CO2.

[John Read]

And then if I come fully up to date in 2018. We've recently launched Shell Bitumen FreshAir helping the industry reduce its impact on local air quality during the mixing and pavement process by up to 40% in terms of NOx SOx, carbon monoxide, VOCs, PM 10, so particular matters 10 microns and PM 2.5 micron particulate’s. And so you know, I think that this shows that Shell has been at the forefront of technology throughout its 100 years.

[John Read]

You know, I'm in the industry and we continue to develop and to innovate and maybe will come onto a little bit of that during the course of the rest of this call. Perhaps I could have the next slide, please, Prianka.

[Slide changes]

VISUAL ICON & TEXT DESCRIBING THE REASONS FOR LAUNCHING SHELL BITUMEN PAVING FORWARD SERIES

[John Read]

And so talking a little bit about this, this series of webinars will be running. Historically, we as is the case, so many of you that are on the call have attended conferences, presented papers, given keynote speeches, run customer days, etc. In order to communicate with the industry. However, this year things have changed with this awful pandemic, and so we're now trying new digital channels to stay connected to our customers through meaningful exchanges. To try and embrace more digital channels, which is now rapidly becoming the new norm and to provide a channel for interactive discussions within the industry. And hopefully you know we will make this very interactive today.

[John Read]

And so on. This basis you know if you do have any feedback for us that will allow us to improve this series, we'd be delighted to hear from you, whatever you have to say.

[Slide changes]

TWO IMAGES SHOWN,

• LEFT: OF THE UK M25 ROAD WITH THE TEXT ‘SHELL BITUMEN IS BUILT TO LAST’ OVER IT
• RIGHT: OF A DILAPITATED ROAD WITH A BIG POTHOLE.

[John Read]

So, you know on today's subject matter of how to make roads last longer what we want, or the wonderful long lasting roads that are shown in the nice picture on the left hand side and try to avoid the potholes and the distress shown on the right hand side. You know when we talk to your colleagues all around world you know are becoming just more and more prevalent to this and let me just explain something about theory of Interspatial repeatability now. I did touch on this in the last call, but I did want to take this opportunity because it's very personal to the subject matter.

[John Read]

You know when we are repairing potholes, what very often happens is that the potholes recur. You know, six months after you filled them, either the material comes out or they just re-deform and the same pothole occurs again. And you know a lot of the time that is not good, Haven't got anything to do with poor material. It's not due to poor workmanship in terms of the potholes. It's not that they haven't been filled properly and done properly. It's because we haven't actually cured the problem that caused the pothole in the 1st place. And what I mean by this is that, very often the pothole is not in itself the problem. It's an event may be 100 yards, 100 meters further back down the road where lorries in particular heavy goods vehicles, they hit the event that that event might be a loose gully grade, it might be a different deformed piece of iron work, It might just be just a bump in the road but that bump in the road causes the suspension on the vehicles to go down and then to come up as it supposed to do, but the bend it tends to hit down, the peak impact.

[John Read]

Now we've measured those peak impacts and those peak loadings, they are anything up to three times the initial or the static loading of the vehicle. Now it's also true to say that we've measured the body bounce or frequency of body bounce of all sorts of different heavy goods vehicles, and they all tend to bounce at about the same frequency, about 3 Hertz ok. Which means that as all the vehicles tend to be traveling at the same speed, their body bounces all at about the same frequency. They hit the same event. It means that they impact with this peak loading at the same point on the pavement 100 yards ahead or whatever it might happen to be.

[John Read]

Time after time after time, now you know Jeyan in a little while, will talk about a little bit about pavement design. But if you believe in the 4th power law, which you take the standard axle and you raise it to the power of 4 to see the impact of any loading, if you tripling the peak loading so you've got three times the normal loading, and you raise three times to the power 4, you have 81 times the loading for that one vehicle on that spot on the payment, and that's happening time after time after time. So the reason I tell you this is 'cause we often get after lot right now. How can we repair roads better? How can we make them last longer? How can we stop the potholes from reoccurring and my answer very often is go back and check your pavement. Look for the event further back down the road that caused the problem and cure that. If you cure that and then repair your pothole, more than likely it will last an awful lot longer than you'll typically used to. So that was just a little piece that I wanted to talk around in terms of maintenance and durability of roads.

[John Read]

And so perhaps the next slide please Prianka.

[Slide changes]

PICTURE OF JEYAN VASUDEVAN (REGIONAL TECHNOLOGY MANAGER-ASIA SHELL SPECIALITIES TECHNOLOGIES) ON THE LEFT AND PICTURE OF YAN HUI (REGIONAL TECHNOLOGY MANAGER- CHINA SHELL SPECIALITIES TECHNOLOGIES) ON THE RIGHT

[John Read]

And so if I could just introduce my two colleagues that you can see on the video. So I have Jeyan Vasudevan and Yan Hui, both will be presenting some solutions from their respective markets and answering your questions as we go forward. So Jeyan is our technology manager for Asia looking after all new product introduction, technical service to our customers, product lifecycle management of all of our products and also being a member of the business leadership team for the region. In addition, Jeyan is just embarking on his PhD which we to complete looking into the use of non-segregated plastic waste in pavements, so that will be a very interesting piece of research going forward.

[John Read]

And Yan Hui is our technology manager for China which is our fastest growing region and she has all the same roles as Jeyan and is also at this point in time busy rebuilding her team after having moved out laboratory from Shanghai to Zhenjiang, one of our plants in China and is also expanding the team to look after this key market.

[John Read]

Jeyan is going to host the rest of this session. So Jeyan over to you.

[John Read]

Yeah, I think you're on mute.

[Jeyan Vasudevan]

Thanks John

[John Read]

Ok perfect.

[Jeyan Vasudevan]

OK, great. Prianka, can I have the next slide please?

[Slide changes]

OVERVIEW OF LONG-LASTING PAVEMENTS WITH GRAPHIC ILLUSTRATIONS TO SUPPLEMENT POINTS

[Jeyan Vasudevan]

Well, long lasting pavement or pavement durability, is the topic that we will be covering in this session today. As John mentioned earlier. And you might have come across different terminology for long lasting pavement. Somebody considered durable pavement, some call it as a perpetual pavement, and so on.

[Jeyan Vasudevan]

So when we're looking at the fundamental, how do we create such kind of pavement and we have to look at from multiple angles, multiple dimensions that we have to consider when we are talking about building long lasting or maintaining a long lasting pavement. The first, most important parameter, as always is the material and how do we select the material. So they asked me to share design that it is being used for that particular situation or particular project has to be meeting certain requirements that is fit for purpose. Many times it is. It is considered that we are just looking into the specification and some of the time that we do understand that we do notice that the specification put forward might not be fit for purpose at that particular need of the project.

[Jeyan Vasudevan]

And when we are talking about the material that is required, we have to look into the overall material, not only the binder but also the aggregate. The aggregate as you know constitutes a higher amount percentage of the asphalt mixture as compared to the binder which is much lesser. The binder plays a crucial role in order to ensure that the material is intact and in place. But there is a lot of emphasize and builds lately on How do we select binder that is going to fit for certain applications?

[Jeyan Vasudevan]

So if you look into the Superpave method for example, just looking from the aspect of the climate condition as well as the traffic loading, their evolving specification that is coming into the market and always looking for what is the advancement that it is really needed in order to achieve the material that is required to be used for the long lasting placement.

[Jeyan Vasudevan]

Having a material that it is superior doesn't warrant that the material is going to be in good condition on the road, so construction practice. How do we construct the road? And this is an element that we have to be taken into more concern on. We have to look from the perspective of the contractors as well as the road owner that own the road and as the road user. So we have to look from an angle where this construction has to be done properly.

[Jeyan Vasudevan]

With the proper construction technique as well as ensuring that the enforcement or the quality control during construction is being done properly. While talking about the construction, and as John mentioned earlier, we have to look into the maintenance of the road as well. So pothole is one of the examples that John has shown earlier that it is coming up in the road. We have to really identify how this damage mechanism is occurring on the road. We have to really understand whether this placement been built in a proper shape and form and over a period of service life, we will see them settlement taking place and bumpiness on the road which is causing this damage that it is coming on the on the road.

[Jeyan Vasudevan]

So when we are building the road we have to plan for the preventive maintenance at the application of the road itself. So we have to look into what are the cycle of overlays and inlays that need to be built in order to ensure that the road is lasting longer.

[Jeyan Vasudevan]

We also need to look into how is the load being dissipated into the pavement. He we know that it is simple mathematical, technically we says that when you're having a different mixture, we can reduce the thickness, but we have to look into the overall pavement design, the overall thickness of the pavement. Where is the distribution of the stress in the pavement layers itself specially at the joints of the interlayers between the layer.

[Jeyan Vasudevan]

And sometimes, especially when we are reducing the thickness of the top layer and what we often find, is it is causing tension on the top of the pavement entire contact area that is causing top down cracking.

[Jeyan Vasudevan]

This is an increasing phenomenon that we are looking at current point of time. And then we are considering to build roads that it is need to be lasting longer, we have to look into the holistic view of how is the stress is being distributed within the pavement layers.

[Jeyan Vasudevan]

So the other element that people be looking a lot is the materials that can be used for construction as the road being there for long period of time we have seen that a lot of appetite to increase the RAP usage or the recycled asphalt pavement.

[Jeyan Vasudevan]

Prianka, can I get the next slide please?

[Slide changes]

OVERVIEW OF RECLAIMED ASPHALY PAVEMENT (RAP)

[Jeyan Vasudevan]

And if we're talking about circularity or the sustainability, we often see that asphalt pavement is one of the highly secular and highly recycled. And we do see that, in recent days in many of the developed country the usage of recycled asphalt pavement is growing higher and higher. Even you can see that their technology being built to enable the higher percentage of RAP that can be introduced into the asphalt mixture.

[Jeyan Vasudevan]

When we are introducing higher percentage of RAP, higher meaning that more than 20 or 25% of RAP into asphalt mixture, basically you need to have some changes in the hardware as well as the material selection or additive that you been used.

[Jeyan Vasudevan]

In putting in a more friendly term, I would say that, if you're looking at hydrocarbon material, it is going through aging mechanism similar to human being. Similar to us when we're looking at ourselves, we are aging as we grow older. If it’s something we could do at our younger age, we find it very hard to do it now especially for me.

[Jeyan Vasudevan]

And also, we do see that this aging mechanism taking place and there are many corrective measures that we can take. For example, in human age you can see that people opt for cosmetics like putting a foundation and then the wrinkles are gone and some go for a little bit expensive solution like putting something for their skin and some go for the fundamental. Looking at building their strengths, they're looking at the food they’re eating, they're looking at the exercise and they look much younger compared to their age.

[Jeyan Vasudevan]

Similarly on the road pavement, you do have many, many options. You have options that can just treat the surface, make it shiny and nice, rejuvenate on the surface alone, but fundamentally, we have technology to look into how does the combination of additives, in combination with all other materials that we are putting in to enhance or rejuvenate back the binder that is being used because it is going to constitute how durable is the road that we're going to build and last for a longer period of time.

[Jeyan Vasudevan]

With that I will hand over to Yan Hui for the following session.

[Yan Hui]

OK, thank you, Jeyan.

[Yan Hui]

Good afternoon everyone.

[Slide changes]

GRAPH DEPICTING PAVEMENT MAINTENANCE TECHNOLOGY (PAVEMENT SERVIABILITY INDEX VS. YEARS)

[Yan Hui]

I am very happy to share with you on some typical pavement maintenance technology in China. I believe most of you are very familiar with this curve. It's the pavement serviceability index, which we called PSI versus service years.

[Yan Hui]

From this picture we can find that in different maintenance technology can be implemented in different stages. When the PS I is still high, we can choose cold treatment like fog seal, chip seal and slurry seal to do the preventive maintenance.

[Yan Hui]

But along with the drop of PSI we may need to consider micro surfacing, NovaChip and Strata to act as both preventive and rehabilitation solutions.

[Yan Hui]

So first I would like to talk about micro surfacing, At the very early stage we can choose micro surfacing to do the preventive maintenance.

[Yan Hui]

So next please Prianka.

[Slide changes]

OVERVIEW OF MICRO SURFACING SYSTEM COLD TEMPERATURE SOLUTIONS AND GRAPHIC ILLUSTRATION OF THE PROCESS AND AN IMAGE OF THE SYSTEM

[Yan Hui]

Yeah, so micro surfacing system has been widely used in China as preventive maintenance and rehabilitation solution to solve minor problems like raveling, rutting, surface oxidation and also can improve surface texture with quick traffic return.

[Yan Hui]

So compared to other surfacing treatment technology, is a very thin emulsion cold mixed overlay with very competitive cost, but it leaves high quality fine aggregates to mix with polymer modified emulsions and be placed with a special machine. It is not only has high requirement on aggregate and emulsion quality but also has very high requirement on the working experience of contruction.

[Yan Hui]

It can prolong the road service year to around two to six years if we can have good control in both product quality and well-organized construction.

[Slide changes]

OVERVIEW OF A PRODUCT CALLED NOVACHIP AND THE DIFFERENCE RANGES

[Yan Hui]

In recently years, another surfacing treatment technology, NovaChip has also been developed and well accepted by China customers. NovaChip is a hot mix asphalt surface treatment with single path system. It's around 1.5 to 2.5 centimeters thick. If you are facing the challenges of noisy pavements, overhead clearance, back spray visibility or north of natural texture, even the challenge of long construction delays, NovaChip will be a good choice. It protects pavement, including both special designed emulsions and also PMB mixtures. We called the emulsion NovaBond, which can seal some water and super bonding with surface layer. And the networked polymer modified bitumen, NovaBind can improve the tension that’s going down and provide better cracking resistance. The special design Hot Mixture use gap-graded aggregates and can improve microtexture and reduce noise and also can make the road more durable. It can even keep good cracking filing after 10 years.

[Yan Hui]

The NovaChip system needs a unique machine called NovaPaver to do the pavement. This machine can spread the emulsions and paving the scene hot mixture at the same time. It's a faster construction system to reduce users delay and can do night construction.

[Yan Hui]

So besides microsurfacing and NovaChip, I would also like to share with you one special technology called Strata. Strata is reflective crack relief system specially designed for PCC reflective cracking. The hot mixture contains fine aggregates with very high Bitumen content.

[Yan Hui]

So it's a very soft and impermeable interlayer of around 2.5 centimeters and is here it will be an overlay of hot mixture asphalt. It's a kind of conventional construction and no need for special equipment. This technology is also widely used in China, especially for those expressways which need to change the color from white to black. So I mean to change the PCC to bitumen road.

[Yan Hui]

Yeah, the most advantage of this system is that because it's very soft interlayer, it can significantly delays the reflective cracking and also assign impermeable interlayer. It can protect pavement from moisture damage. So it can also obviously prolong the service life of the road.

[Yan Hui]

So these are the solutions I would like want to share with you, so thank you and back to Prianka.

[Prianka Krishnamurthy]

Thanks Yan Hui, maybe I'll pass it over to Jeyan for the Q&A.

[Jeyan Vasudevan]

Thanks Prianka, can I get the second poll question please?

[A Poll question is presented to the audience]

IN YOUR VIEW, WHAT REPRESENTS THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE FACED IN EFFORTS TO EXTEND THE LONGEVITY OF ROADS?

[Jeyan Vasudevan]

OK, participants you can see that the polling question at your end now. In your view, what is the biggest challenge facing the effort to extend the longevity of roads of

[Jeyan Vasudevan]

OK you can put in your responses please. Ok thanks for your responses and Prianka, can I get the pre-asked questions please.

[Prianka Krishnamurthy]

Sure Jeyan, so the polling is almost up. OK, and these are the questions.

[Slide changes]

LIST OF QUESTIONS POSED BY CUSTOMERS DURING FIRST WEBINAR THAT IS RELEVANT TO THIS WEBINAR’S TOPIC

[Jeyan Vasudevan]

Thank you, and please type in your questions in the question and answer session so that we can also have those questions been answered during these sessions.

[Prianka Krishnamurthy]

I guess we do have one question here. Before we go into the questions that we have received before this session Jeyan. From Satish Kumar, we have a How do we say that a PMB is uniformly mixed? Can you suggest some quick screening methods?

[Jeyan Vasudevan]

Good, thanks for the question Satish. When you are talking about Polymer Modified Binder, there are many types of additive they will be using and depending on the type of additive and the way you can do the measurement can be different and of course, there are ways, we can use like for example if the additive that you are using is fluorescent, you can also use a fluorescent microscope to see how well it is being dispersed in the binder or the crude way is just to do a storage stability test that can give you similar results, but to ensure that whether the distribution is being done properly and whether the material is storage stable or not because most of the time you can disperse the additive into the Binder, but if the compatibility is not there then the tendency for the binder to be segregated with the additives is high, so this can be a screening method that can be easily used and John if I may ask you to add on if there is anything else.

[John Read]

No, I think you've answered the question perfectly Jeyan. They would have been the two methods that I would have responded with.

[Jeyan Vasudevan]

Thanks John.

[Jeyan Vasudevan]

So Prianka are there anymore question in the list because it's too long actually.

[Prianka Krishnamurthy]

No, that's not a problem. So we do have some questions, So from Haris R, his question is With all these new products. Any idea went to introduce them to the Indonesian market?

[Jeyan Vasudevan]

Yeah, Pak Haris, so it's a great question.Yeah, of course we do have some of the product that we tried out in our Indonesian market, especially our polymer modified binder. In fact, the binder that we are applying in the Soekarno–Hatta Airport is also using our technology. And any modification that is used for high durable material, of course the surface technology that was mentioned by Yan Hui is something that we have in our portfolio. If there is a need we can always made such kind of technology available for you Pak Haris.

[Jeyan Vasudevan]

Yeah, I think that would be the question and the answer.

[Prianka Krishnamurthy]

OK, we have one more question from Lu Jia, What is the reflex technology shown in the presentation? Maybe Yan Hui, you want to take this.

[Yan Hui]

Pardon, I didn't see the question here.

[Prianka Krishnamurthy]

The question is, What is the reflex technology shown in the presentation?

[Yan Hui]

OK.

[Jeyan Vasudevan]

If I may add on to that, I think the presentation that Yan Hui has done, she was talking about the Strata technology, and I believe that in the slide we did mention about reducing the reflex cracking when we're having high stiff material like a concrete pavement and we are going to overlay that concrete basement or the symmetric base with the asphalt material. Then the usage of Strata have a better impact for reducing the reflective cracking.

[Yan Hui]

Yeah, so even these Strata technology is designed for the cement concrete. It's also can be used in the in the bitumen pavement and also has good effect for the reflective cracking.

[Prianka Krishnamurthy]

Thank you both. We have one more question from Rayan and his question is When we think of sustainable pavements, of course the RAP comes into picture, what is your experience regarding long term performance of the pavement constructed with the RAP usage?

[Jeyan Vasudevan]

OK, that's a very interesting question. Maybe before I answer, we ask John to take up this hard question first.

[John Read]

Yep, by all means. So indeed the usage of RAP has been prevalent for a long time, particularly in Europe, and now increasingly so in Asia and China. What we are starting to see now, in Europe in particular is that we are now starting to recycle the already recycled pavement, so they're going through their second or sometimes their third level recycling. So the experience on the 1st iteration of recycling, which really was on average, including about 10% RAP going up to a maximum of 20% RAP because it was in the early days. That has all worked incredibly successfully and you know, essentially, we were at that point in time just doing that would keep ending. So we were looking at how hard the bitumen was on the RAP. We were looking at what viscosity we wanted to achieve in the final pavement and we were adding a certain amount of new binder, a softer binder or back into that material in order to be able to achieve that level of viscosity and that worked very well on the 1st iteration.

[John Read]

What we are now finding in our research though, is that there is a level of oxygen uptake in the asphalt which becomes critical. So we often measure that particular level and what we find is that if you allow the oxygen uptake to get to 5% in the actual teams within the RAP, then in actual fact you can't really recycle that as a binder any longer. It is essentially just black rock and you just have to add back in, you know conventional bitumen and assume that you get no contribution from the binder that's in the RAP, and so this thing comes down to, you know, looking at your materials, looking at your pavements and understanding at what stage the material is actually at. Because really you want to always recycle before you get to 5% oxygen uptake. If you do that then it allows you to keep recycling time after time and you know making material truly circular truly sustainable.

[John Read]

If we leave our pavements too long and we allow the oxygen uptake to get to 5% or beyond, then in truth you know then we're not being truly circular. We're not really recycling the binder, only really recycling the aggregates and we have to add back, you know, full amounts of binder otherwise we get premature failures and so that's really our experiences that you can recycle time and time again. It is very, very effective. Now we're seeing even you know much, much higher levels of RAP by people adding second drums on their plants to be able to heat it separately so that it doesn't clog the screens and cause problems in the plant you know.

[John Read]

And we are seeing you know levels of RAP very typically up to 50%, sometimes as high as 70% in particular, you know we see many papers and many claims of what they call 100% recycling. With a small amount of binder being added, but the you know, that is questionable. In my honest view my engineering opinion, I think you do need some addition of new aggregate and some additional new binder alongside the RAP so you know my personal view is that 70% is about as high as we can go, and be assured that the pavements that we build will have longevity and that we're not actually just really creating a legacy of situation for other people to deal with in the future.

[John Read]

So Jeyan, perhaps not sure if you want to add anything to that.

[Jeyan Vasudevan]

No John, I guess you covered it very well and so I hope that you have answered Rayan’s question.

[Prianka Krishnamurthy]

Well, thank you gentlemen. We actually have a two part question from John Cedric Chan. So the first portion says What are the project limitations of using Strata technology in preventing reflective cracks? and How can we check the quality of Strata product prior to application.

[Yan Hui]

Yeah, actually we have a document to indicate how to use this kind of technology and what pre work needs to do prior to using this in the pavement. So if you have potential projects or very interested in this kind of Technology, I think you can contact your local Shell Technical representative to get more documents.

[Prianka Krishnamurthy]

Oh Cedric has also put in another question, he said In the Philippines we use concrete pavement as a stabilized, durable layer. What are your recommendations in adapting superpave method of mix design in designing the wearing/binder asphalt cause of the roads?

[John Read]

OK, well that is actually is a very interesting question because when we look at what superpave has done in the US, what we've seen is that in the past, before early 90s, late 80s, what they were seeing in the US was a lot of rutting. So a lot of real defamation and they brought Superpave in, did all of the research etc stuff to get better binders, better mixtures, better designs, that was that was great and what we have now seen since then is that superpave has essentially eradicated deformation of the pavement. But what it has done is created, you know, a propensity for cracking in certain areas, particularly where they've got large differentials of temperature. And so, in some ways, the standard superpave design doesn't work so well on top of concrete pavements. For the simple reason that that has a tendency to crack and you already have essentially cracks in all concrete pavements, because we build them in unless it's continually reinforced. But if you are then rehabilitating it, then even if it's continually reinforced, it means that you've probably got cracks or spoiling, or some sort of degradation. That's going to reflect through whatever layer you put on top. And so the adaptation you know is that you know we want to have you know ,higher binder contents, modified binders and probably slightly finer gradings in order to be able to ensure that we don't that we don't create stiff mixtures that will have a propensity to crack or to allow the cracks to propagate through, and so that's how we would really have to adapt superpave in order to be able to lay it effectively over the top of concrete pavements.

[John Read]

But again, welcome back to is the technology that Yan Hui described in terms of Strata. If you put that sort of stress absorbing membrane into layer, you know over the top of your concrete pavements. Then it's incredibly effective at resisting all of those cracks coming through, and then you can lay standardized materials on top without being so concerned about the cracks in the lower layers, and so that would always be my advice is to put a layer of Strata in and then to construct on top.

[Prianka Krishnamurthy]

Thank you John.

[Prianka Krishnamurthy]

I guess I want to say to everybody, we are getting quite a few questions so we do apologize if we are unable to cover all of them today, but what we can do is, you know, after the session we will have a document with the responses and then the responses will be shared with your shell bitumen representative so you can get in touch with them if your question is not covered in today's session.

[Prianka Krishnamurthy]

So OK so we have 10 more minutes. How about a few more questions? We have one question from Veeraraghavan. His question is Preventive maintenance treatment can be applied to pavement in good condition. How to quantify and define good condition?

[Jeyan Vasudevan]

OK, let me start first and then hand over to John. In my opinion that when we are designing the pavement itself, the are going to design the basement for certain period of time and of course they saying the design philosophy is 1 but in the actual then we subjected to the material that has been selected as well as the construction that has taken place and not only these two parameter but we also need to look into the other parameters such as the drainage capacity and also the traffic loading and overloading condition on the road, so it might not follow the intended damage mechanism, so it would be always ideal to have screening or business management that being done on the sector of road that we can plan our maintenance cycle, but it would be ideal to have GPA type of vehicle in order for us to screen the road network but having a data available on the condition of the rule will give us a better idea when it is. How do we introduce the preventive maintenance before it goes into the damage and easily identify is when we are already seeing such development of microcracks and so on. This is an early indication whether payment is starting to deteriorate. John over to you.

[John Read]

Yeah. I mean this is a very good question and thank you for it. It's very difficult to answer definitively because every country has different requirements, different standards, different ways of looking at their pavements. Some countries will look at the polishing of the aggregate because skid resistance tends to fall off before you start to get to structural deformation or structural cracking. Some countries are not so concerned. That's good resistance, and they're looking at the structural quality of the road, and so they're looking at the onset of cracking or a certain level of deformation. So in the UK, for example, you know if you get to 10 millimeters of deformation in a road that is defined as getting to critical. So you really need to act at that point if you want to be applying preventative maintenance. If you allow it to go beyond that, then you start to get towards failure which is determined at 20 millimeters of defamation, or alternatively 10% are passing on the pavement surface, and so because every location has a different requirement, it has different traffic. Different climatic conditions. I think that this is something which needs to be determined for this specific location, and that's certainly something you can discuss with your local shell, technical representative, and you know, and then begin to look at, what would be the point for your particular conditions? Your particular location that would determine when you need to start to apply preventative maintenance because and to be honest with you, you know when we talk about how do you make lies roads last longer? I mean, that is the answer. You know, you design them to be as long as to last. As long as you possibly can. You know, and one of the things I did we haven't really got to it in terms of answering any questions, but I do want to just touch on it and that's compaction, you know? So when

you're building your structure, whatever it is, compaction is absolutely critical. If you don't get the compaction right and really to the right level.

[John Read]

Don't fill the voids with Bitumen because if you do that then it will start to deform, but you don't want to under compact it because then you get secondary compaction and it will deform, so compaction becomes critical in all of this and you know and I'd like to give a shout out to a lot of the work that's been done in the US with intelligent compaction. You know that would be definitely something that I would advise everybody to or to look into. You know. So they now have the rollers controlled by GPS positioning. And so that you you know you can get your rolling plan together you can. You can ensure that every part of the pavement has a sufficient number of passes of the roller. You can also monitor in real time the actual density of the surface and therefore you can ensure that your compaction level is exactly correct, you know, and one of the things they've done in the US along that line is given bonus payments to contractors who compact their structure as well but also penalized. Contractors who haven't compacted there at their pavements properly and importance for the specification and so after that acts as a real incentive to make sure that that we really constructing these structures correctly in the first place.

[John Read]

And that you know. So that's one thing you can do that doesn't really cost a huge amount of money, but it will save an awful lot of money. You can also, you know, put stiffer binders in the lower layers when you’re constructing your pavement in the first place.

[John Read]

And that will also allow you to have longer pavements. But you know they will still deteriorate. And if you always apply preventative maintenance, it is cheaper to provide put in preventive maintenance then it is to have to reconstruct. But unfortunately what we always do is say that somebody else’s problem, because often it's a political cycle that determines when you're going to do any work which is really wrong for the pavements. As we all know what we really want to do is to apply preventative maintenance at the point at which we start to get to critical. Rather than to failure, and that allows us to keep the life of pavements up to where we wanted to be. And this is on bitumen and get the maximum possible performance out of your pavement. So I guess that's really what I want to add jeyan.

[Prianka Krishnamurthy]

Thank you gentlemen. Maybe we have time for just one last question. One question from James Purdy. Any suggestion on methods of quality control for pavement, either in situ or laboratory.

[Jeyan Vasudevan]

Can you repeat the question?

[Prianka Krishnamurthy]

Sure, Any suggestions on methods of quality control for pavement, either in situ or laboratory.

[Jeyan Vasudevan]

Quality control again. I mean, these are the things that John has already mentioned earlier. One of the things that we do normally on the quality control and on site during construction is the compaction level of convection being monitored during the construction, either using infrared method or using neutral density or non-nuclear density measurements that being utilized. And the during the design or in the laboratory, of course we can check on how is the mixture performance and this is the pre work I would say it is just to ensure that whatever has been done in the design phase has been followed during the mission production and laying face on the actual.

[Jeyan Vasudevan]

John if you want to add anything.

[John Read]

No, no, I think that's fine Jeyan. I did just want to make one point 'cause we're coming to the end and Prianka mentioned this but you know there have been so many questions that we haven't got to, so we can only apologise for that. And what exactly is Prianka says we will answer all of those questions. We will write answers to them and then we will post that document on our centenary website which Prianka will give you the details of so that so that you can go in and see the answers and then if you want to take up any further discussion with us as some of them are quite detailed and very specific questions you know, then we're very happy to do so.

[Prianka Krishnamurthy]

Thank you John, and that flow me very nicely into saying we have come to the end of this today's session. So we do thank you all for your participation and and you know, we do apologize that we couldn't cover all the questions. It's also just a gentle reminder to please complete the post event survey to give us your feedback. This will definitely help us curate more topics you may be interested in. Also, if you enjoyed today's webinar, do lookout for more updates and invitations to our future sessions and you can view that at www.shell.com/ShellBitumen100. We look forward to seeing you again at all our future events.

[Prianka Krishnamurthy]

Goodbye and we hope you have a wonderful day.

[Prianka Krishnamurthy]

Thank you everybody. Thank you.