Bitumen is the oldest known Engineering Material and has been used from the earliest times as an Adhesive, Sealant and Waterproofing Agent. A non-crystalline Solid or Viscous material having adhesive properties derived from Petroleum either by Batural or Refinery processes, and substantially soluble in carbon disulphide. Bitumen are Black or Brown in colour. This may occur naturally but are usually made as end products from distillation of or extracts from selected crude.
Penetration Grade Bitumen -Used in road surfacing, and some industrial applications
Additional processing yields other grades of bitumen products and their applications are
Oxidized Bitumen - Produced by more vigorous air blowing; they are more 'rubber like' and less temperature susceptible than the paving grades. Used in roofing, waterproofing, electrical products, and many others.
Hard Grade Bitumen - Harder paving grades and are used in making paints and enamels etc
Cutback Bitumen - Blends of penetration bitumen with Solvent such as kerosene used in spraying and some mixing applications
Emulsion - Stabilized Suspensions of bitumen in Water. used largely in road surfacing applications
Polymer Modified Bitumen - Mixtures of selected bitumen with polymers such as Thermoplastics or Elastomer used in many applications On the Roads Hot Mixtures
Typically hot bitumen is delivered to a fixed asphalt plant where the hot mixture is produced and then transported to the road site for laying and compaction to produce the finished road surface. Different specification binders allow the road construction industry to create surfaces that facilitate different performance .
Surface Dressing is a process commonly used for road maintenance. It normally consists of spraying a thin film of binder onto the road surface using a mobile spray vehicle. This is immediately followed by the application of a layer of stone chipping that are rolled to embed them into the surface. Emulsions and cutbacks are usually used in the spray application. Variations on these two main themes have also been developed for bituminous road surfacing.
PENETRATION
The test determines the hardness of Bitumen by measuring the depth ( in tenths of a mm) to which a standard, and loaded needle will vertically penetrate in 5 seconds, a sample of Bitumen maintained at a temperature of 25 deg C ( 77deg F). Hence the softer the bitumen, the greater will be its number of penetration units.
SOFTENING POINT
This test is carried out by the Ring and Ball method, which consists of suspending a brass ring containing the test sample of Bitumen in water at a given temperature. A steel ball is placed upon the bituminous material, the water is then heated at the rate of 5 deg C increase per minute. The temperature at which the softened bituminous material first touches a metal plate at a specified distance below the ring is recorded as the Softening point of the sample.
FLASH POINT
In the interest of safety, legislation has been introduced in most countries fixing minimum flash point limits to prevent the inclusion of highly inflammable volatile fractions in kerosene distillates. According to Controller of Explosives classification it falls in the category of Class B Petroleum Products. Its flash point (Abel) is stipulated as Min. 35 deg C in the IS specification.
ARTICLE - Bitumen Pricing
The Soaring Oil prices although justifies the fluctuation in the pricing of bitumen, there is not an established mechanism to derive the bitumen price till date. The bitumen market is getting mature and liquid. The majority of the exporting nations include Singapore, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Thailand in this region has different inputs and the range varies significantly.
Recently the Cartel led by Shell was exposed by the European regulators and the was fined to the tune of price fixing on various petroleum products.
For Bitumen, there are no posted prices except for compiled prices from various paid subscription services ; marketer rely on a number of pricing formulas that reference various posted crude qualities.
Market pricing is seasonal with higher prices during peak season like summer being the norm due to higher demand for bitumen and other bitumen derived products.
By necessity, bitumen is regularly blended with diluent (typically in the form of C5+ or synthetic light crude) in order to facilitate its transportation via pipeline to tankers.
As such, the effective field price for bitumen is also directly impacted by the input cost of the diluent required, the demand and price of which is also seasonal in nature (in winter as colder temperatures necessitate more diluent for transportation).
Consequently, bitumen pricing is notoriously high in summer and during major shutdown by the refineries and not reflective of the annual average realized price or the economics of the business overall.
The strong bitumen demand disturbs the effective field prices during peak season for a variety of reasons. In addition to the usual seasonal issues, increase in bitumen demand and the premium for diluent was significant as a consequence of various events such as production interruptions at a regional refinery.
The absence of a generally recognized approach to the determination of appropriate bitumen pricing, coupled with the pricing seasonality (which has not been sufficiently addressed ) meant that any number of interpretations existed as to how year-end bitumen prices should be determined, for the purpose of filing to the regulatory authorities, as well.
With billions of barrels of potential and billions of dollars of planned capital investment, the bitumen resources are widely understood to be a cornerstone of future energy requirements and are attracting notable attention from overseas jurisdictions as well.
It is in the best interest to all stakeholders (investors, capital markets, regulatory bodies, producers and the public at large) that a year-round bitumen pricing methodology be established that reasonably reflects the general market conditions and is not unduly influenced by seasonal demand or weather-driven.
In fact, the adoption of the proposed methodology for all crude qualities would have little or no effect on reported proved reserve quantities for all categories, bitumen excepted.
Bitumen is the oldest known Engineering Material and has been used from the earliest times as an Adhesive, Sealant and Waterproofing Agent. A non-crystalline Solid or Viscous material having adhesive properties derived from Petroleum either by Batural or Refinery processes, and substantially soluble in carbon disulphide. Bitumen are Black or Brown in colour. This may occur naturally but are usually made as end products from distillation of or extracts from selected crude. 
Penetration Grade Bitumen -Used in road surfacing, and some industrial applications
