A Sustainable Approach to Cleaning Porous and Permeable Pavements

Abstract

The clogging of porous and permeable pavements is a problem that faces many municipalities and, because of the high associated costs, it has become a major impediment to the uptake of such water sensitive and sustainable technologies. This study has experimentally examined the performance of seven cleaning methods that were shown to be able to restore higher infiltration rates in partially clogged pavement systems. It was found that high-pressure water injection was the most effective cleaning method, particularly when combined with vacuuming. The highest restoration of infiltration rate was achieved using high-pressure water injection combined with the highest-pressure vacuum, which produced an average increase in infiltration rate of 20.9%. Cleaning a porous pavement involves removing the sediment that has caused clogging in the first place. In normal circumstances, this collected sediment would have to be dried before disposal to a landfill, which is another costly process. Through a sustainability analysis, the potential reuse of collected sediment was investigated and it was found that the resulting economic and environmental benefit-cost ratios were high.