Production of Polymer Modified Asphalt Binder

The most common issue in road design is rutting (permanent deformation) and cracking due to extreme cold temperatures, especially in cold areas like Alberta. Our product is designed to withstand extreme cold temperatures and high traffic loads making it more resistant to permanent deformation, rutting and cracking. This allows for long lasting roads that require less frequent maintenance with lower costs.

What makes our design innovative is the addition of the oxidizing unit. Typically refineries do not include the oxidation unit. However, since PAV Co is producing polymer modified asphalt binder, the pre-preparation of the binder is important to bring some of its properties closer to the specification required prior to polymer mixing. Within the oxidizer, vacuum residue is air blown at high temperatures of 200℃ – 275℃. Dehydrogenation and polymerization are involved in the exothermic air blowing reaction. In principle, the oxygen in the air reacts with the hydrogen in the asphalt (a hydrocarbon) to produce water vapour. This leaves unsaturation for cross-linking. The blown asphalt thus has more and stronger molecular interactions than the original bitumen and is, therefore, more cohesive. Blowing causes the softening point to increase and the penetration to decrease. This means that blowing reduces the temperature susceptibility of bitumen. This makes for better and more durable asphalt for paving roads.

Another innovation would be the addition of the desalter unit. What makes this unit particularly innovative is its electrostatic properties that furthers the separation of water-oil emulsions. This unit excels in separating solids and large emulsion droplets via gravity, however inducing an electric field allows for further coalescence of more stable emulsion droplets improving water-oil separation allowing for a more pure crude oil downstream for processing. This beats the typical gravity settling techniques as the electric field allows for a purer crude with less solids, salts, and water. The removal of contaminants also ensures that our asphalt binder maintains its high quality for road pavement.

The purpose of production of PMA (Polymer Modified Asphalt Binder) is to adjust the mechanical and rheological properties of unmodified asphalt binder via the addition of SBS polymer. The process allows for higher quality roads that can withstand extreme temperature variations and increased traffic loads.

Another effective approach was the plant location to be selected as Ardmore, Alberta, Canada near their field of production, in order to minimize the pipeline transportation costs.

The distance between Cold Lake and Ardmore, our desired plant location, is about 24 km

• The Husky Endowed Research Chair in Bituminous Materials at the University of Calgary has been Canada’s top centre of asphalt research for over 25 years. Over the course of our project we have been consulting Dr. Martin Jasso, the chair and head of research of Husky’s Bituminous Materials research program. Dr. Jasso provided us with constructive advice on process unit selection, unit design specifications as well as operating conditions. Our design solution validation was mainly based on Dr. Jasso’s research papers as well as other published literature.
• Furthermore, we’ve taken into consideration alternative designs used in asphalt production facilities overseas. We consulted ENPPI, an EPC company, which engineered, procured, and constructed a project for an asphalt production plant located in Suez, Egypt.
• Lastly, we validated our design by modelling our process on Aspen HYSYS using the Peng-Robinson thermodynamic package.

From the profitability analysis conducted, we concluded that PAV Co.’s design is economically feasible and our product is viable.

Shown below is our profitability analysis and sensitivity analysis, respectively.