Professional Documents
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BITUMEN BY BITUROX
10/2008
„Bitumen is a black,
sticky and, when hot,
© OMV
smelling material.“
The name of the tool to optimally reconcile the market-demand for top-grade bitumen with the upstream cost
controlling effort is
biturox®
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Pörner: Bitumen Upgrading Specialists The world largest
Biturox® plant at
Płock, Poland.
The Pörner Group with a work force of 350 experts in the field of chemical and refinery engineering is special-
ised in bitumen technology. Pörner only and alone built the largest number of bitumen processing plants of all
dimensions and all over the world. This achievement enabled Pörner Group to accumulate the most compre-
hensive expert knowledge in engineering, design, construction, start-up and operation of bitumen plants.
• Technology
The core piece of the Biturox® Process is the unequalled loop reactor. In this perfect aeration reactor the ther-
mo-chemical conversion of selected raw material blends by air-oxygen takes place continuously and under
repeatable conditions. The process allows controlling all important process parameters (pressure, tempera-
ture, flow rates, residence time etc.) with high accuracy. Biturox® technology proofs that the oxidation process
can run both effectively and very softly: The valuable aromatic components are formed and preserved in the Biturox® Pilot Plant in
Schwechat, Austria.
reaction mixture and, at the same time, the degradation of organic compounds to coke and the build-up of
deposits is minimised. Deriving from the process fundamentals, the features of safe and automated operation
as well as low turnaround and maintenance requirements, make the Biturox® process to the most attractive
solution for a modern bitumen producer.
• Experience
Pörner knows much about bitumen: A visco-elastic, complex mixture of chemical compounds, difficult to
handle. Based on Pörner‘s engineering expertise the most perfect bitumen plants have been realised. Applying
all principles of efficiency to blending, heating, cooling of bitumen, to optimise instrumentation and automa-
tion, to minimise by-products and emissions, to save and recover energy, to keep maintenance and down-
times low. Selecting, the ideally suited equipment, minimising delivery times and making construction fast
and easy and to taking care of personnel training, commissioning and start-up.
Pörner designs and realises Bitumen Plants including all infrastructures out of one hand:
production units of high availability, easy to operate and designed for a long lifetime.
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Modern world of bitumen
Roads are connecting people. Bitumen is the most versatile and qualified material for fast construction of
long-life and inexpensive roads. The process product industry is another consumer of extra bitumen qualities
for roofing felts, construction coating, bitumen emulsions etc.
Biturox® bitumen products contribute to have a „world-wide growing network of perfect roads“ and to have
„tight roofs everywhere“.
Highlight
The Biturox® Process guarantees the user almost complete independence from crude types, simultaneously
allowing to make the best qualities of bitumen.
The name is the Biturox® paradoxon: Better quality from cheaper feedstock components.
Multigrade:
combined and impro-
Stiffness
High PI
temperature range
for compaction
(High PI)
The designation Multigrade used in this leaflet has the same meaning as in the lubricating oil terminology.
Multigrade oils are characterised by a reduced dependence of viscosity with temperature. They are able
to do their services over a wider temperature range and are characterised by a high viscosity index. The
same system fits to bitumen products: Multigrade can be used in the above sense, viscosity index should be
replaced by penetration index - PI.
• The Feedstock
High molecular weight components of all chemical configuration types, present in most crude oils are suited
as feedstock for the Biturox® Process. The only exception is, when in the starting material for bitumen the
paraffinic hydrocarbons predominate. In this case the Paratox® process, a two-step Biturox® Process, has to
be used. The following products of refining activities are on the list of bitumen raw material:
• Vacuum residue (short residue) VR • Atmospheric residue (long residue)
• Pitch from bright stock de-asphalting PDA-P • Heavy vacuum gas oil HVGO
• Aromatic extracts from lubricating oil processing EXT • Heavy cycle oils from cracking, visbreaking, coking
• The Method
High quality bitumen must show a harmonic distribution of saturates, aromatics, resins and asphaltenes.
Biturox® multigrade bitumen is made by the method of composition control.
Several raw material components of different chemical nature are selected and combined to an adequate
feed composition. This composition is forwarded to the Biturox® Process where it is integrated by air oxidation
under clearly defined and absolutely controlled processing conditions.
The Biturox® reactor is the perfect tool for such operation: FEED COMPONENTS
BY SCANNING
SPECIFIC PRESSURE
AND TEMPERATURE
Conclusion
Bitumen as the residue of crude is chemically very complex. Taking advantage from its research database
and many hundreds of pilot tests carried out on crudes from all over the world, Pörner has gained the experi-
ence to optimise feedstock compositions and to design the process most adequate to make a quality product -
even from cheaper feed components.
The Biturox® Process creates and preserves the valuable medium molecular weight aroma-
tics in bitumen improving the elastic properties as well as adhesion on the aggregate. The
result is a product with tailored chemical structure and optimum quality characteristics:
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Biturox® Multigrade Bitumen.
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The Biturox® pla
Product Storage
and Loading
Product storage designed to keep
the product homogeneous.
Utilities
Plant and instrument
air.
Electrical power, steam,
water
Product Section
Product blending for tailor-made
products (optional).
Heat recovery for pre-heating.
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ant
Reactor
Inner loop type reactor
design warrants optimised
but also very gentle treat-
ment of the medium.
Operation is very safe due to
total utilisation of air oxygen.
Pre-heating
Pre-heating of feedstock
blend to processing tem-
perature. © Pörner Ingenieurgesellschaft
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Research and Piloting
Biturox® Research Facilities
For more than 30 years the Biturox® Research Centre is an excellently performing service provider to the
whole industry, making or using bitumen. Up to date laboratory and semi-technical research and development
facilities, analytical methods of newest standard and the backup of the nearby OMV refinery enabled and
promoted Pörner‘s efforts to stock-up the most comprehensive expertise on bitumen making world-wide.
Two Biturox® pilot plants are available for practical testing of feedstock or composition of several components
in batch or continuous operating mode. The results of pilot tests are used as design basis for Biturox® plants
(i.e. reactor rating). Reference samples can be produced from defined feed compositions ready for further
applied testing by the client.
All results of basic and applied research work, the experience gathered during design, construction, start-up
and routine operation of the numerous Biturox® plants, the information feedback from the Biturox® licensees,
the newest findings of the Biturox® Enhancement Technique (chemical upgrading of bitumen) and, obviously,
the performance reports on application of Biturox® bitumen have been collected in a most comprehensive
database.
Target
Many bitumen research institutes over-emphasise the significance of crude oil provenance and compositional
classification, simultaneously neglecting to notice and to review the chances, which lie in the thermo-chemical
modification of an almost unlimited palette of crude oil derived feedstock.
The main objective of the Biturox® Research Facilities is therefore, to find methods how to optimise the chemi-
cal composition of bitumen, namely reaction conditions, which promote the synthesis of polar, aromatic com-
pounds and suppress the decomposition of asphaltenes to coke.
But finally the goals of the said efforts have to be to satisfy the market demand for bitumen qualities with
outstanding and superior application characteristics at a reasonable low price.
Result
The Biturox® technology is a representative example how applied and scientific research can be conducted
effectively, rewarding and to the benefit of many people, driving on good roads, living in comfortable accom-
modations and both under cost-saving conditions.
Biturox® MBW
Mitteldeutsches Bitumenwerk
Granschütz, Germany
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Project realization
The Pörner Group is, as documented in this brochure, the most experienced bitumen plant designer and con-
structor worldwide. The volume of data in the electronic files is the basis for an expedient and cost-saving
project realisation in every single step. The table below gives a general overview of the scope and steps of the
realisation of a “turn-key grass-root” project:
• Preliminary studies, information & data collection
• Feasibility study
• Evaluation of raw material, laboratory & pilot-plant testing
• Evaluation of the technical, commercial, legal and
ecological conditions
• Presentation of the recommendations to and
acknowledgement by the client
• Action planning, scheduling, project cost assessment
• Chemical, mechanical, civil basic and detail Biturox ESHA,
®
Amsterdam, Nether-
engineering lands
Biturox® Wörth Mobil Oil Wörth Mobil Oil Wörth Wörth Germany 1978
Fact Sheet
Configuration 1 Reactor, Feedstock
heating/Product cooling
through direct heat
exchange, Knock Out Drum,
Offgas-Incinerator, Pipeline,
truck-, drum- and bag filling
Capacity 400 tons/day
Image
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rox References
®
Biturox® Chelyabinsk Dept. Car Roads Dept. Car Roads Chelyabinsk Russia 2000
Biturox® Taiwan Simosa Oil Corp. Simosa Oil Corp. Mailiao Taiwan 2002
Biturox® plant
Biturox® Gujarat IOCL Gujarat Refinery Vadodara India 2002 Jaroslavl, Russia
Fact Sheet
Scope of Basic design for the process
services and off-plot units, detailed
engineering, procurement
Fact Sheet
Scope of Basic design, detailed
and supply of the plant
services engineering, procurement
equipment and material, site
supervision, start-up, training and supply of the process
and documentation (general unit, site su pervision,
contracting) start-up assistance, training
Capacity
and documentation
480 tons/day
Capacity 1,032 tons/day
Image
Image
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