Petroleum Bitumen

Petroleum Bitumen

How do experts obtain Petroleum bitumen? Petroleum bitumen is mainly from crude oil and is usually called “Bitumen” or “Asphalt”.

They store crude oil in tanks at 60° C temperature. Then they pump it from these tanks through a heat exchanger system.

The process of obtaining petroleum bitumen starts after the pump when the oil heat is at a temperature of 300 degrees in the furnace. The oil converts to steam in an atmospheric distillation pipe.

For obtaining petroleum bitumen during this process, physical separation takes place. The heavier components settle at the bottom of the tower, and the lighter components stay above the heavy components. They filter the tower by passing it through the second heat exchanger in the vacuum distillation column.

They produce this substance either directly from crude oil or indirectly by performing some processes such as air blowing. In fact, petroleum bitumen is the residue of a distillation tower.

This material varies from zero to 50 in the percentage of containing crude oil. Moreover, they can differ based on the crude oil that they were obtained from due to the various specifications of each crude.

The higher the quality of crude oil, the better the quality of the produced petroleum bitumen. The quality degree of bitumen depends on the amount of volatile material that remains. The lower the amount of volatile material, the harder it is to obtain the bitumen. In fact, it is a material that is very difficult to extract and most of this process requires physical mining instead of pumping.

People who are known as bitumen experts do not consider petroleum to be just a product of oil refining. They consider it as a material with a complex and advanced structure.

Petroleum has a high application in construction such as paving and roofing materials. The end use of petroleum specifies the ultimate components which are formed whether through blending or the process of refining.

The global use of petroleum bitumen is nearly around 102 million tons per year. 85% of the produced bitumen is proper as a binder of asphalt applied to roads, airports, and car parks. Besides all these applications, minor uses of petroleum should not be neglected. Uses such as soundproofing, a binder of briquettes, and soil stabilizer.

To sum up, this substance has lots of applications in construction projects in the world. Many countries tend to import and apply this material for their buildings, road paving, and repairs. Countries such as Kenya, Tanzania, and India are the main importers of this material.