What is Bitumen?
Bitumen is a liquid by-product of crude oil produced at 5000 Celsius. It is black in color and highly viscous and sticky bitumen is the most common binder consumed in road construction. Bitumen is produced in the crude oil refinery process as one of the heavier derivatives of the fractioning process. Bitumen has a very adhesive property to it which makes it ideal for combining with aggregates and other construction materials during the road laying process. Bitumen is much more cost-effective than cement or concrete roads and much more similar in properties to tires and rubber. This makes it more effective for gripping during the braking process of vehicles. Bitumen can be transported in drums, bulk, jumbo bags, and bitumen containers.
What is Bitumen?
Bitumen is a liquid by-product of crude oil produced at 5000 Celsius. It is black in color and highly viscous and sticky bitumen is the most common binder consumed in road construction. Bitumen is produced in the crude oil refinery process as one of the heavier derivatives of the fractioning process. Bitumen has a very adhesive property to it which makes it ideal for combining with aggregates and other construction materials during the road laying process. Bitumen is much more cost-effective than cement or concrete roads and much more similar in properties to tires and rubber. This makes it more effective for gripping during the braking process of vehicles. Bitumen can be transported in drums, bulk, jumbo bags, and bitumen containers.
What is Bitumen Emulsion?
Bitumen emulsion is a mixture of fine droplets of bitumen and water. But as the bitumen is a petroleum product it doesn't mix with water and as it is sticky in nature, it doesn't easily gets disintegrated into fine droplets. To overcome this problem an emulsifier is used. Emulsifier can be defined as a surface-active agent. Emulsifier keeps the bitumen in its fine droplet state by disallowing it to mix with other droplets. As the droplets are very fine they suspend in water. “Therefore, bitumen emulsion is a dispersed liquid consisting of three products, i.e. water, bitumen and emulsion”.
What is Cutback Bitumen?
The industry is sometimes in need of low viscosity bitumen. There manufacturers came to a solution to deliver cutback bitumen which is a low viscosity liquid dissolved in a solvent. The main advantage of this type of bitumen is that there is no need to heat it before using. Cutback bitumen is made by the addition of controlled amounts of petroleum extracts such as kerosene, naphtha, diesel oil, and furnace oil to perform as a solvent. Although these adhesive materials are added to lessen the need for heating before using, they will evaporate as the bitumen is applied. This process is done for a temporary reduction of the bitumen viscosity. Cutback bitumen is more appropriate for cold regions than the others. Primer sealing and sprayed sealing are some items for which cutback bitumen is suitable.
What is Poly Modified bitumen?
Polymer modified bitumen (PMB) is one of the specially designed and engineered bitumen grades that are used in making pavement, roads for heavy duty traffic and home roofing solutions to withstand extreme weather conditions. PMB is a normal bitumen with the added polymer, which gives it extra strength, high cohesiveness and resistance to fatigue, stripping and deformations, making it a favorable material for infrastructure. Pavements designed and constructed for heavy-duty traffic and extreme weather conditions require specially designed engineered Bitumen Grades. By changing the characteristics of normal bitumen with the addition of a polymer, either they are of elastomeric nature or elastomeric, we succeed to obtain bitumen that allows the mixture to be more cohesive, with much more strength and significant higher resistance to parameters like fatigue and permanent deformations for road pavements.
