Recycled concrete aggregate as road base: Leaching constituents and neutralization by soil Interactions and dilution

Recycled Concrete Aggregate (RCA) is often used as a replacement for natural aggregate in road construction activities because of its excellent mechanical properties, and this trend should increase as more transportation departments include RCA in specifications and design manuals. Concerns raised by some engineers and contractors include impacts from leachate generated by RCA, both from transport of metals to water sources and the impact of a high pH leachate on corrosion of underlying metal drainage pipes. In this study, RCA collected from various regions of Florida exhibited pH ranging from 10.5 to 12.3. Concentrations of Al, Ba, Cr, Fe, Mo, Na, Ni, Sb, and Sr measured using batch leaching tests exceeded applicable risk-based thresholds on at least some occasions, but the concentrations measured suggest that risk to water supplies should be controlled because of dilution and attenuation. Two mechanisms of pH neutralization were evaluated. Soil acidity plays a role, but laboratory testing and chemical modeling found that at higher liquid-to-solid ratios the acidity is exhausted. If high pH leachate did reach groundwater, chemical modeling indicated that groundwater dilution and carbonation would mitigate groundwater pH effects.