Understanding performance differences

Recently, Nynas bitumen research team has published an article entitled “Structural and Chemical Analysis of Bitumen Using Time-of-Flight Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (TOF-SIMS)” in Fuel, a leading journal for publishing primary research work in this field.

It has been shown that the structures formed on the bitumen surface are closely related to the wax content and that these structures, as well as the surface in general, are enriched in wax-related compounds. For the wax-free bitumen, the surface is characterized by a homogeneous distribution without chemical variations or phase structures and by a stronger signal intensity from aromatic compounds. When adding wax to the wax-free bitumen, extensive wax segregation occurs, but differently from the natural waxy bitumen, no bee structures are observed. Furthermore, fracture surfaces of all the wax-containing samples reveal circular structures, which are distinctly different from those observed on the original surfaces. The obtained chemical knowledge on bitumen surfaces and phase structures is of fundamental importance to understand performance differences of this type of materials.

This research work was carried out in collaboration with SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden.

Read full paper via the web-link:
 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016236117302429