ASTCHEM TECHNOLOGIES- PAVING THE WAY GREEN
Road construction is a very high carbon emitting process, and it is imperative to achieve ‘Net Zero Emission’ goal, technologies that emit ‘Zero Carbon’ during road construction should be adopted. To implement this vision, Mr Abhijit Mohinta, a post-graduate Civil Engineer with more than 20 years’ experience in the field of asphalt technologies with some of the global leaders, decided to set up Astchem in 2017.
Within this short span, Astchem footprints have spread over to almost all the states of Eastern part of the country, namely West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh and N-E states.
Backed by a state-of-the art plant and asphalt laboratory situated in Howrah, West Bengal and with a team of asphalt professionals, Astchem is poised to spread its wings further to other parts of the country.
Astchem products include all grades of emulsions including Rapid Setting / Slow Setting / Medium setting emulsions used in tack coat, prime coat and other applications. Astchem emulsions have been evaluated by IIT Delhi, NIT Patna and others, and found to meet all technical parameters of Indian and ASTM specifications. But what sets Astchem apart from conventional suppliers, is their ability to produce engineered products meeting the challenges posed by aggregate quality, weather condition, haulage distance and other site conditions.
In last few years, NRIDA, has taken big steps in encouraging ‘Green Technologies’ like ‘Cold Mix Asphalt (CMA) for construction of PMGSY roads. A life cycle assessment study conducted by five institutes under the overall supervision of IIT Madras showed that PM10 emission was 33% lower with the use of cold mix asphalt over Hot mix. In addition, 7% reduction in energy consumption was also noticed for CMA.
Astchem Cold Mix products have outperformed many other established products in the market in providing a maintenance-free longer life pavement to customers, resulting in significant savings in maintenance cost. Further Astchem has a widely diversified portfolio of Cold Binder for various applications. For example, Super / Ultra / Regular are different grades of cold binder used in conventional manual road construction projects with concrete mixers.
Hi-Pave is a product which is used in mechanized plant mix work. While, many other products, failed to meet the demands of mechanized construction, roads constructed with Hi-pave have fulfilled the requirements of engineers and contractors. Astchem Supermac grades are engineered products developed for Surface Dressing and Micro Surfacing work. Similarly, Astchem MSS is designed for Mix Seal Surfacing work.
To expand use of Cold Mix Technology further, Astchem had collaborated with Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IITM) for developing design for Denser Graded Mixes. Study revealed that Cold Mix Design with Astchem products exceed the requirements of Marshall stability and other parameters of international and IRC recommendations.
Apart from superior quality of the products, on-ground technical services provided by Astchem engineers played a major role in scripting the success story.
Further, Astchem is in the process of setting up a state-of-the-art Polymer modified Bitumen (PMB) and Crumb Rubber Modified Bitumen (CRMB) plant, at Howrah, West Bengal, to meet the rising demand of Performance graded binder as per AASHTO. To encounter the challenges of carbon emission due to high temperature of production and laying, Astchem intends to incorporate Warm Mix additives to bring down production and laying temperatures considerably thus reducing carbon emission and resulting in substantial fuel savings. Introduction of WMA will allow paving in extreme cold climates which is a major challenge for construction of border roads.
With road construction activities planned to ramp up by 16-21%, Astchem Technologies is committed to make a significant contribution in Indian road construction scenario.
