Bitumen

For the manufactured material, which is a refined residue from the distillation process of selected crude oils, bitumen is the prevalent term in much of the world; however, in American English, asphalt is more commonly used.

Its viscosity is similar to that of cold molasses[8][9] while the material obtained from the fractional distillation of crude oil boiling at 525 °C (977 °F) is sometimes referred to as "refined bitumen".

The Canadian province of Alberta has most of the world's reserves of natural bitumen in the Athabasca oil sands, which cover 142,000 square kilometres (55,000 sq mi), an area larger than England.

[11] The word "asphalt" is derived from the late Middle English, in turn from French asphalte, based on Late Latin asphalton, asphaltum, which is the latinisation of the Greek ἄσφαλτος (ásphaltos, ásphalton), a word meaning "asphalt/bitumen/pitch",[12] which perhaps derives from ἀ-, "not, without", i.e. the alpha privative, and σφάλλειν (sphallein), "to cause to fall, baffle, (in passive) err, (in passive) be balked of".

Tar is the thick liquid product of the dry distillation and pyrolysis of organic hydrocarbons primarily sourced from vegetation masses, whether fossilized as with coal, or freshly harvested.

The majority of bitumen, on the other hand, was formed naturally when vast quantities of organic animal materials were deposited by water and buried hundreds of metres deep at the diagenetic point, where the disorganized fatty hydrocarbon molecules joined in long chains in the absence of oxygen.

The Canadian province of Alberta has most of the world's reserves, in three huge deposits covering 142,000 square kilometres (55,000 sq mi), an area larger than England or New York state.

These veins formed by the polymerization and solidification of hydrocarbons that were mobilized from the deeper oil shales of the Green River Formation during burial and diagenesis.

[30] Microscopic analyses found bituminous residue on two-thirds of the stone artefacts, suggesting that bitumen was an important and frequently-used component of tool making for people in that region at that time.

Geochemical analyses of the asphaltic residues places its source to localized natural bitumen outcroppings in the Bichri Massif, about 40 km northeast of the Umm el Tlel archeological site.

A re-examination of artifacts uncovered in 1908 at Le Moustier rock shelters in France has identified Mousterian stone tools that were attached to grips made of ochre and bitumen.

The use of natural bitumen for waterproofing and as an adhesive dates at least to the fifth millennium BC, with a crop storage basket discovered in Mehrgarh, of the Indus Valley civilization, lined with it.

[33] In the ancient Near East, the Sumerians used natural bitumen deposits for mortar between bricks and stones, to cement parts of carvings, such as eyes, into place, for ship caulking, and for waterproofing.

[39][40] In Canada, aboriginal people used bitumen seeping out of the banks of the Athabasca and other rivers to waterproof birch bark canoes, and also heated it in smudge pots to ward off mosquitoes in the summer.

A pamphlet dated 1621, by "a certain Monsieur d'Eyrinys, states that he had discovered the existence (of asphaltum) in large quantities in the vicinity of Neufchatel", and that he proposed to use it in a variety of ways – "principally in the construction of air-proof granaries, and in protecting, by means of the arches, the water-courses in the city of Paris from the intrusion of dirt and filth", which at that time made the water unusable.

Its rise in Europe was "a sudden phenomenon", after natural deposits were found "in France at Osbann (Bas-Rhin), the Parc (Ain) and the Puy-de-la-Poix (Puy-de-Dôme)", although it could also be made artificially.

[57] Trials were made of the pavement in 1838 on the footway in Whitehall, the stable at Knightsbridge Barracks,[56][58] "and subsequently on the space at the bottom of the steps leading from Waterloo Place to St. James Park".

On the west coast, as early as the 13th century, the Tongva, Luiseño and Chumash peoples collected the naturally occurring bitumen that seeped to the surface above underlying petroleum deposits.

Electric trolleys (at 12 miles per hour) became the main transportation service for middle class shoppers and office workers until they bought automobiles after 1945 and commuted from more distant suburbs in privacy and comfort on asphalt highways.

The nearest town, Fort McMurray, Alberta, was a small fur trading post, other markets were far away, and transportation costs were too high to ship the raw bituminous sand for paving.

The use of bitumen as a glaze to set in shadow or mixed with other colors to render a darker tone resulted in the eventual deterioration of many paintings, for instance those of Delacroix.

The remaining 5% of bitumen is used mainly for sealing and insulating purposes in a variety of building materials, such as pipe coatings, carpet tile backing and paint.

[89] Anionic emulsifiers are often fatty acids extracted from lignin, tall oil, or tree resin saponified with bases such as NaOH, which creates a negative charge.

That enables a classification into Rapid-setting (R), Slow-setting (SS), and Medium-setting (MS) emulsions, but also an individual, application-specific optimization of the formulation and a wide field of application[89] (1).

They are used in road construction and building protection and primarily include the application in cold recycling mixtures, adhesive coating, and surface treatment (1).

Many modern oil refineries are extremely sophisticated and can process non-upgraded bitumen directly into products such as gasoline, diesel fuel, and refined asphalt without any preprocessing.

[95][96] Bituminised radioactive waste containing highly radiotoxic alpha-emitting transuranic elements from nuclear reprocessing plants have been produced at industrial scale in France, Belgium and Japan, but this type of waste conditioning has been abandoned because operational safety issues (risks of fire, as occurred in a bituminisation plant at Tokai Works in Japan)[97][98] and long-term stability problems related to their geological disposal in deep rock formations.

Naturally occurring crude bitumen impregnated in sedimentary rock is the prime feed stock for petroleum production from "oil sands", currently under development in Alberta, Canada.

Other typical applications include the production of mastic asphalts for sidewalks, bridges, car-parks and urban roads as well as drilling fluid additives for the oil and gas industry.

[114] In 2020, scientists reported that bitumen currently is a significant and largely overlooked source of air pollution in urban areas, especially during hot and sunny periods.