India, Sept. 30 -- In all kitchens, there is usually some used cooking oil that is difficult to dispose of. Some of it ends up in the trash, while civil engineers have explored whether it could instead become a component of road pavement. Laboratory research has shown that waste cooking oil can soften the aged binder in old asphalt, potentially making it easier to incorporate large amounts of reclaimed pavement into new mixtures.

In the2019 study in the Journal of Traffic and Transportation Engineering, Hamed Majidifard, Nader Tabatabaee, and William Buttlar studied waste cooking oil as a recycling agent in asphalt made primarily from recycled pavement. Majidifard and Buttlar were affiliated with the University of Missouri, while Tabatab...