To have a real start of the blog, I have prepared a post on the first basic question everyone unfamiliar with Bitumen will ask:"What is Bitumen?" here I have tried to present a fairly simple description of Bitumen! I hope you find it useful.
Bitumen is a dark black, greasy and viscous oiled based substance. A non-crystalline viscous material having adhesive properties derived from petroleum either by natural or refinery processes and substantially soluble in carbon disulphide.
Bitumen is a mixture of Organic Liquids and composed primarily of highly condensed Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons. It would typically comprise at least 80% carbon and 15% hydrogen, the remainder being oxygen, sulphur, nitrogen and traces of various metals.
Bitumen can be obtained from various sources. It occurs naturally or from refinery process. Bitumen is found in nature in several forms, from the hard, easily crumbled bitumen in rock asphalt to the softer, more viscous material found in tar sands and so-called asphalt lakes.
Naturally occurring or crude bitumen is a sticky, tar-like form of petroleum which is so thick and heavy that it must be heated or diluted before it will flow. At room temperature, it is much like cold molasses.
Bitumen may occur naturally but for most purposes it is petroleum on which the world relies for its supplies of bitumen. Refined Bitumen is the residual (bottom) fraction obtained by fractional distillation of crude oil. It is the heaviest fraction and the one with the highest boiling point, boiling at 525 °C (977 °F). The bitumen content of crude petroleum oil can vary between 15% and 80%, but the more normal range is 25% to 40%.
In North America, bitumen is commonly known as “asphalt cement” or “asphalt”. While elsewhere, “asphalt” is the term used for a mixture of small stones, sand, filler and bitumen, which is used as a road paving material. In Australian English, Bitumen is sometimes used as the generic term for road surfaces. In Canadian English, the word bitumen is used to refer to the vast Canadian deposits of extremely heavy crude oil, while asphalt is used for the oil refinery product used to pave roads and manufacture roof shingles.
The uses of bitumen are numerous. The chief one in most countries is for road construction. It is also used for surfacing airfield runways and taxi tracks, hydraulic applications such as canal lining, river bank protection, dam construction and sea defenses. There are also numerous industrial applications like roofing felt manufacture, printing inks, electrical cable / Junction boxes, mastic for roofing of terraces, duplex paper manufacture etc.
P.S: Gildatar Bitumen is proud to make possible the supply of Middle East bitumen in multiple grades 60/70, 80/100, 85/100, 85/25, 40/50, and 30/40.
Sources: petroleumbazaar.com , bp.com , shivamtarproducts.com , eurobitume.eu
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