Slurry Seal Research

• Significant cost savings can be achieved by organizing pavement preservation work so that the contractor will have several weeks of work in one geographic area.
• Delaying pavement preservation by applying a treatment on an existing pavement with a PCI of 60 instead of 80 will result in an increase in equivalent annual treatment costs between about 70 to 100%.
• Delaying the application of the treatment to an existing pavement condition of 40 will result in an increase in the equivalent annual treatment cost of about 300%.

The researchers found that, in most cases, the extra energy embodied in the cool material was far greater than the energy savings from increasing the albedo. 

“Over the life cycle of the pavement, the pavement material matters substantially more than the pavement reflectance,” - Ronnen Levinson of Berkeley Lab.

“I was surprised to find that over 50 years, maintaining a reflective coating would require over six times as much energy as a slurry seal. The slurry seal is only rock and asphalt, which requires little energy to produce, while the reflective coating contains energy-intensive polymer.” - Ronnen Levinson of Berkeley Lab.

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