What is Bitumen ?
Bitumen is a complex and complicated matter that has been recognized by human long years ago. Bitumen has been used for building construction and decoration, artificial prostheses, making ships waterproof and even mummification. Bitumen naturally is beneath the earth crust as springs, lakes, and surface mines and occurs in the form of solid and liquid. In fact it was bitumen which had used by our ancestors and in late nineteenth century had been used for making roads and pavements. Finally by discovering oil and create residual bitumen, the way to use huge amount of bitumen been opened. Asphalt cover with bitumen today make very smooth roads for light and heavy vehicles and high quality runways for landing and takeoff aircrafts and even good infra structure for railways. Houses insulations and industrial functions like protecting coating of oil and gas pipes and power transportation lines holds out bitumen’s coating and being waterproof. Statistics in 2007 shows that 110 million ton bitumen has been make annually in world and Iran’s share is 4.3 million ton which by increasing the potential of refinery it will be increased. Today, Chemistry and chemical engineering in our country has developed so much in universities which we can see one or two or even trends of related fields can be seen in them.
