Home
Lloydminster OTS
Heavy Oil Show
What is Heavy Oil?
Geology
Drilling
Completions
Transportation
Upgrader
Refining
End Users
Oil History
Oil People
Oil Links
Petroleum Society

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Asphaltenes Help Make Asphalt

Asphalt Chemistry:

Asphalt is a complex mixture of hydrocarbons which can be separated into two major fractions - asphaltenes and maltenes (petrolenes)

Separating of asphaltenes and maltenes fractions is done by diluting asphalt with straight chain, saturated hydrocarbons (n-alkanes) such as: Pentane (C5H12)

Normal Pentane.JPG (13799 bytes)

and Heptane (C7H16) (below)

Heptane.JPG (9764 bytes)

Asphaltenes are the portion of asphalt which precipitates out when treated as above. It is then a dark brown to black solid with a molecular weight of 1800 - 3000.  One attempt to derive its chemical formula (based on Athabasca bitumen) was C200H246N2S7O4.   The maltenes remain in solution in the n-alkane solvent.

Asphalt Products from the Lloydminster Refinery

bullet    Paving Asphalts  
 
bullet    Road Oils
bullet    Polymer Modified Asphalts (PMA)
bullet    Roofing Asphalts

Asphalt Specifications

Two principal specifications are available to the paving industry:

  1.     Canadian General Standards Board (CGSB) "Asphalt Cements for Paving   Purposes", CAN/SGSB - 16.3 - M.90
            - Penetration - Viscosity Graded Asphalts
            - Temperature Susceptibility
  2.     Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP)
            - Performance Graded Asphalt
            - Six newly developed tests to grade asphalt by performance rather than by physical tests.

 

 

Website 1997 - 2008 by Foster Learning Inc.