Asphalt and asphalt products

Asphalt cement is sometimes distilled from crude oil and is used in several commercial asphalt products usually found on road construction sites or in other construction and maintenance projects. This distilled crude oil product can be found in rubberized driveway resurfacing material, in roofing shingles, and in other similar products.

Asphaltum is a natural product that has been used by several past civilization as water-proofers, mortars or concrete to solidify stone structures and for other uses. In it's natural form asphalt concrete is a bitumen

Crude bitumen vs refined bitumen.

Oil is a natural crude bitumen and a sticky black tarry substance that is deposited in rock like formation and that is thick enough that it needs to be distilled, heated, or diluted before it will flow. Refining crude oil produces synthetic bitumen or oil petroleum product. Through a fractional distillation process where only the bottom fraction or the heaviest part of the crude is captured by boiling crude at nearly 1000 degrees Fahrenheit a synthetic asphalt like product is obtained. The word asphalt itself is used in reference to a product that is made by mixing bitumen and certain mineral aggregates such as sulfur, nickel, vanadium, lead, etc.... The word tarmac is sometimes used instead of asphalt but this is a bit of a misconception since tar is obtained from the distillation of coal and not of oil. Tar was a major product in the bonding of aggregates before the age when natural gas replaced town gas in the refinement process. Since then real tarmac ( tar + macadam roads ) is nearly gone the way of the Dodo bird. Australian use the word bitumen to describe road surfacing materials. In Canada bitumen refers to heavy crude oil while in the USA asphalt or asphalt cement refers to the oil product used in road paving and in roof shingles and other materials.

Natural asphaltum have been mined in the past in places like Trinidad and Tobago, in Venezuela, and in other locations globally.

Roads have been paved on a major scale since the early 1900's and while new asphalt concrete is sometimes used it is also common practice to reuse old road pavement or recycled asphalt in the paving of new roads or in the resurfacing of existing paved roads. The pouring and rolling of asphalt concrete has always depended on the proper use of road surfacing equipment such as the steel wheel roller. As time as progressed scientists and engineers have come up with new types of asphalt products that compete with rolled asphalt. One such product is called mastic or stone mastic asphalt. Advancement in technology as also allowed for new emulsions to be fabricated from asphalt due to the ability to soften it at lower temperatures. A few such products include Chipseal and Slurry Seal.

Paving roads is not likely to go away anytime soon but there are issues that raise eyebrows such as the merit of having roads covered with substances that are not very eco-friendly, or the likelyhood that someday soon the world will reach peak oil at which point the paving of roads might not be economically possible. However most humans take a scientific approach at solving such problems. With science comes innovation and an ability to resist any attempt at altering our high rolling lifestyle.

Enter bioasphalt or what some might call eco-friendly asphalt or even bio bitumen. If this type of product that is made from things like sugar, tree rubber, cellulose and other more bio degradable substances ever reaches the mass markets then we may yet have a very large resource capable of paving new roads or maintaining and resurfacing existing ones.

See more on the future of bioasphalt at ecopave.com.

Roofing shingles are meant to provide a water proof barrier to your home. They provide peace of mind and they have a great track record to stand the test of wide climate parameters. Some roofing shingles are a mixture of fiberglass resins and asphalt.

Driveway sealers are a spin off of other asphalt concretes used in road construction.

Some paints used on fences, gates, poles, pipes, and tanks both underground and above ground use asphalt as a bonding agent.

Basically this aggregate binding agent is used anywhere when adhesion or protection from the elements is required.

seaboardasphalt.com has a good list of products made of synthetic asphaltum.