INFLUENCE OF CRUDE SOURCE ON THE VISCOUS PROPERTIES OF

BLENDED ASPHALT
N.K.Rajan1) , J.Murali Krishnan2)
1)

PhD student, 2)Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras,
Chennai 600036, India.
jmk@iitm.ac.in (CORRESPONDING AUTHOR)

V.Selvavathi, B.Sairam
R&D Division, Chennai Petroleum Corporation Limited, Chennai, India

ABSTRACT: Asphalt is processed in India through different means; it is straight-run, air blown or blended. Production of asphalt for
paving purposes in some of the refineries is carried out by blending the heavy extract with the PDA pitch. Since 60/70 or 80/100
penetration grade is predominantly used in India, appropriate proportions of PDA pitch and extract are blended to meet the penetration
grade. Considering the current move towards viscosity grading in India, an investigation was conducted to characterize the influence of
different crude source and blending methods on the final viscous properties of blended asphalt. In this investigation, PDA pitch from
three different sources was blended with heavy extract to produce the blended asphalt. Three different proportions were used resulting in
nine types of asphalt. The blending was carried out in a feed line. To understand the influence of blending operation on the viscous
properties of blended asphalt, a laboratory blending was designed and samples from one crude source were blended using that process.
All the blended asphalts were aged in a rolling thin film oven and pressure aging vessel. Steady shear properties at 60 and 135 oC were
determined using a Brookfield viscometer. PAV aged samples were subjected to steady shear using an Anton-paar MCR-301 dynamic
shear rheometer. From the test results, it was clearly seen that crude source, processing method and blend proportion play a significant
role on the viscous properties of the blends. Different temperature susceptibility parameters were calculated based on the apparent
viscosity at 60 and 135 oC of the blends. The blends prepared with the laboratory blending process exhibited better temperature
susceptibility and homogeneity.

Key words: Asphalt Blends, Apparent Viscosity, Steady Shear

1.

precipitated asphalt settled at the bottom as a result of

further processing of vacuum residue in a propane
deasphalting unit for extraction of heavy oils.
This precipitated asphalt is a good blending component
with high softening point and with a penetration value of
around 0-5. Appropriate proportions of PDA pitch and
extract are used to meet the 60/70 or 80/100 penetration
grades predominantly used in India. An efficient line
blending process with a controlled feed rate of the blends
at a mixing temperature of 190-200 oC is carried out so as
to ensure homogeneity of the blends. The final grade to
be achieved is normally obtained by changing the feed
rate depending on the properties of the feed stock used for
blending (Rajan et al. 2008).
A number of investigations have been carried out related
to the use of PDA pitch as a major blending component
for manufacture of asphalt in countries like Russia and
Israel. Otherwise, very little technical data is available
about blended asphalt in the rest of the world. Also
systematic investigations on the rheological properties of
these blended asphalts are also not available. This study
reports for the first time the ongoing investigation being
carried out to quantify the influence of the crude source,
various blending components and their proportions and
the processing methods on the viscous properties of the
final blended asphalt. In the following, experimental
investigations conducted on various blended asphalts of
each crude source are detailed. The steady shear and

INTRODUCTION

India has the second largest road network in the world

today with a total length of about 3.3 million kilometers
(NHAI 2008). Majority of these roads are of poor quality
with 40 % of Indian villages having no all-weather road
access and most of the national highway stretches are two
lanes, with low service and slow speeds. To overcome
this situation, India is currently proceeding with creating
a world class highway infrastructure facility on a very
large scale. More than US$ 50 Billion is being spent on
connecting the length and breadth of the country with
four to six lane roads. The first phase of the road
construction is completed and efforts are on to quantify
the performance of the constructed facilities. But
unfortunately the asphalt specifications being used in
India at present is the traditional penetration grading
system. Very recently only recommendations have been
made to shift to viscosity grading.
Asphalt is processed in India through various means. It is
either straight run after vacuum distillation or air-blown
or some times processed by blending. The manufacturing
process depends on the crude source and the final grade
required. Refinery economics also play a major role on
the manufacturing process (Corbett 1965).
Normally in a blending process the heavy extracts from
the residuum stream (bright stocks produced from
deasphalted oils) is blended with the PDA pitch to
produce paving asphalts. PDA pitch is the propane

3.2 Experiments
The Brookfield HA DV-II rotational viscometer with the
thermosel apparatus was used for conducting steady shear
experiments on the material at all the three conditions;
unaged, short -term aged and long-term aged. The
samples
were subjected to short-term aging using a rolling thin
film oven (ASTM D 2872-04) and long-term aging using
a pressure aging vessel (ASTM D 6521-05). Two fixed
temperature levels; 60 and 135 oC were selected.
Normally 60 oC is considered to measure the behavior of
asphalt binders at pavement in-service temperature and
135 oC is used to measure the apparent viscosity of
asphalt binders to ensure the ability of pumping and
handling during HMA mixing and laying operations. Also
apparent viscosity measured at both 60 oC and 135 oC
before and after aging is considered as good indicators of
asphalts temperature dependency and asphalt hardening
due to aging (Peterson et al. 1994).
A sample quantity of 8.0 ml as recommended by the
manufacturer and a spindle of type SC4-21 manufactured
by Brookfield was used. The sample holder, the selected
spindle as well as the sample prepared all were preheated
for a period of 60 minutes before starting the test. Steady
shear data was gathered at a rate of 16 data points per
second by shearing the material continuously for 10
minutes at a fixed shear rate and temperature. Depending
on the temperature of testing, the shear rates were so
chosen such that the torque was between 10 and 98 % of
the instrument capacity. This is necessary to ensure that
there is a good repeatability of the experiments data
within an allowable error of 10 percent.
The apparent viscosity of all the samples at 60 and 135 o
C were calculated as the average of the three steady state
viscosity values observed at the end of 6th, 7th and 8th
minute of the experiments as per the ASTM D4402-06
procedure. The shear rate adopted at 135 oC was 70 RPM
(65.1 s -1) and the shear rate adopted at 60 oC was 0.1
RPM (0.093 s-1). It is necessary that at a constant
temperature, the shear rate was kept constant for all the
samples so that meaningful comparisons can be made.
But due to the torque limitations of the Brookfield HA
DV-II rotational viscometer, steady shear experiments at
60 oC for PAV aged samples of all the blends were
conducted using an Anton-paar MCR- 301 Dynamic
Shear Rheometer (DSR). Enough care was taken to
ensure that the measurements were identical for the same
testing conditions using these two equipments.

apparent viscosity measurements are discussed finally.

The significance of aging is also evaluated.
2.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Production of paving asphalt using the blending process

is well detailed in an article by Corbett (1965). The
various operations involved in blending of PDA Pitch and
the experimental data related to the significant oxidation
necessary during the blending process is detailed by
Akmetova et al. (1979) and also by Pushmyntsev et al.
(1982). They have used parameters like penetration,
softening point and viscosity at 80 oC for comparisons.
The product of deasphaltization (PDA pitch) has to be
subjected to high oxidation before diluting with selective
purification extracts (Rudenskaya et al. 1966).
Investigations on reformulated asphalt were also done by
Allakhverdiev et al. (1987). They concluded that the
quantity of heavy distillates as a blending component
should be at the range of 30-35 % for better performance
of the blended asphalts.
The latest work on blended asphalts is by Ishai and
co-workers (Ishai and Tuffour, 1987; Ishai, 1995; Ishai
and Yuval, 2002) in three significant publications. They
have detailed about various investigations on different
blending components of propane precipitated asphalt
(PPA). Viscosity at 60 oC was used to rank the
consistency of reformulated asphalt compared with the
straight run control sample by Ishai and Yuval (2002).
They have also discussed about the need for
investigations of the reformulated blends for performance
grading system given by SHRP and Superpave protocols.
3. EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATIONS
3.1 Material
Three crude sources identified as Basra Light, Upper
Zakum and Arab Mix was used in the complete set of
investigations. The PDA pitch and heavy extract
processed from these crudes by Chennai Petroleum
Corporation Limited (CPCL) was used to blend the
asphalt. Three asphalt blends 90:10, 85:15, and 75:25
(proportions of blending components; the PDA pitch and
heavy extract) of all the three sources were prepared in a
laboratory scale using a pilot plant at CPCL for these
investigations. A blend ratio of 90:10 normally gives
60/70 penetration grade asphalt used in the southern part
of India. All the blends were prepared in the laboratory,
simulating the regular line blending process normally
followed by CPCL asphalt plant. The blends from the
crude source Arab Mix were also subjected to an
additional blending process. In this process the blends
were subjected to a laboratory blending process involving
high shear rate mixing for 75 minutes at a temperature of
150 oC. These two blends of Arab Mix will be called in
this paper as line blends and lab blends. The idea was
to see whether high shear rate mixing at high temperature
will result in a highly homogenized mixture with better
temperature properties.

4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

4.1. Steady Shear Experiments
Steady shear experiments were conducted on blended
asphalt samples at all aged conditions by applying a
constant shear rate and fixed temperature as already
discussed. In these experiments, essentially for very small
shear rates the shear stress approaches its steady state
monotonically (Bird et al. 1987). For large shear stresses,
the shear stress reaches a maximum and then approaches
the steady state value. While conducting steady shear

experiments on a viscoelastic material like asphalt a shear

stress overshoot after sudden imposition of a fixed finite
shear rate during start-up flow can be seen. This reveals
the striking non-linear phenomena of asphalt (Wekumbra
et al. 2005).
With this background, if one observes the Figure 1 (a),
(b), (c), and (d), lot of interesting observations on the
influence of blending process can be made. The figures
detail the shear stress vs. time of line and lab blend of
Arab Mix at unaged and RTFO aged conditions measured
at 135 oC.
The relative homogeneity of a lab blend as compared to
the line blend achieved by its controlled manufacturing
process at a high shear rate and high temperature is
clearly seen in figures 1.a, b, c and d, when one observes
the time taken for the line and lab blends to reach a steady
state at a constant shear rate. In figure 1(b) at the unaged
condition, the 90:10 lab blends reaches the steady state
earlier as compared to the 90:10 line blends in figure (a).
In case of the RTFO aged blends, in figure 1(d) all the lab
blends reaches the steady state much earlier as compared
to the line blends in figure 1 (c). Figure 2 clearly
demonstrates the effect of aging on the material. It details
the shear stress vs. time of 90:10 and 75:25 blends at
unaged, RTFO aged and PAV aged condition at 60 oC.
The material becomes stiffer due to excessive hardening
as a result of the laboratory simulated aging. If one
observes carefully figure 2, it would be interesting to note
that the PAV aged 90:10 blend exhibits almost ten times
higher shear stress as compared to unaged and RTFO
aged conditions. This shows the effect of aging on the
internal structure of asphalt.
Also the influence of crude source on the shear stress
values at 135 oC is clearly seen on figure 3. For a fixed
shear rate, one can observe how the Basra Light 90:10
blend exhibits a maximum shear stress as compared with
the other two 90:10 blends of Upper Zakum and Arab
Mix crudes.
The influence of blending proportions is well understood
from figure 4 which details the shear stress vs. time for
the Upper Zakum 75: 25 and 85:15 blends at both unaged
and RTFOT aged conditions. One can observe from this
figure the proportional increase in shear stress with the
increase in PDA pitch content in both the conditions for a
fixed shear rate.

Fig. 1 a: Influence of blending process; Arab Mix-Unaged, Line

Blends

Fig. 1b: Influence of blending process; Arab Mix-Unaged, Lab

Blends

Fig. 1c: Influence of blending process; Arab Mix-RTFO Aged,

Line Blends

Fig. 4 Influence of blending proportions

Fig. 1d: Influence of blending process; Arab Mix-RTFO Aged,
lab Blends

Fig. 5 a Apparent viscosity at 60 oC (0.1 RPM, Unaged

Fig. 2 Influence of Aging

Fig. 5b Apparent viscosity at 60 oC (0.1 RPM), RTFO Aged

Fig. 3 Influence of crude source

Fig. 5c Apparent viscosity at 60 oC (0.1 RPM) PAV Aged

Fig. 6c Apparent viscosity at 135 oC under all the aged

conditions (70RPM), Arab Mix

Crude
Source

Basra
Light

Blend
composition

Table 1: Effect of RTFO and PAV aging on the apparent

viscosity of blended asphalts
Viscosity aging
index at 135 oC
(RTFOT, PAV) *

Viscosity ratio at
60o C (RTFOT,
PAV)
**

90:10

1.42, 1.71

1.35, 22.51

85:15
1.21, 1.96
1.82, 19.2
75:25
1.28, 1.56
1.84, 10.28
90:10
1.22, 1.90
1.78, 8.01
Upper
85:15
1.19,
2.19
1.58,
10.93
Zakum
75:25
1.28, 1.66
1.76, 4.11
90:10
1.35, 1.72
3.64, 9.94
Arab
85:15
1.25, 1.88
5.17, 15.64
Mix
75:25
1.27, 1.54
1.80, 3.40
*Viscosity aging index = Viscosity of aged asphalt / Viscosity
of unaged asphalts at 135 oC.
**Viscosity ratio= Viscosity of aged asphalts / Viscosity of
unaged asphalts at 60 oC

Fig. 6 a Apparent viscosity at 135 oC under all aged

conditions (70RPM), Basra Light

4.2. Apparent Viscosity

The figures 5 and 6 plotted above shows the apparent
viscosity values of blended asphalts at both 60 oC and 135
o
C. The influence of crude source, the blending
proportions and the effect of aging on the apparent
viscosity values of the blends are clearly shown in these
graphs. Table 1 shows the aging indices for various
blends and crude sources.
If one observes figure 5 (a), 5(c) and table 1, some very
interesting observations can be made. The viscosity
spikes to 1,46,000 poise after PAV aging from 6487 poise
during unaged conditions for the 90:10 Basra Light blend
with a highest viscosity ratio of 22.51 compared to blends
from other crudes. This shows that this particular blend

Fig. 6b Apparent viscosity at 135 oC under all the aged

conditions (70RPM), Upper Zakum

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may result in to excessive hardening due to long term

aging if used as a paving binder as compared to the other
blends.
Also the influence of the blend proportions on the
apparent viscosity of the material is evident on both
figure 5 and 6. The apparent viscosity proportionally
increases with the increase in the PDA pitch content both
at 60 and 135 oC for all the crudes.
One can also observe the poor temperature susceptibility
property of 90:10 blends for all the crudes from both
figure 5 and 6. The wide difference between the unaged
and PAV aged apparent viscosity values of 90:10 blends
of all crudes compared with other blends proves its poor
temperature susceptibility property.
Also if one observes figures 5 a, b and c, the influence of
crude source on the apparent viscosity of the blends at 60
o
C can be seen. The same trend is also observed at the
apparent viscosity plots at 135 oC. As a result one can
conclude that Basra Light blends behave as more a solid
like material justified by its high apparent viscosity
values as compared with the other two crude sources and
this behavior increases with the increase in PDA pitch
content.
CONCLUSIONS
This investigation summarized some of the viscous
properties of the blended asphalt. The important thrust
here was to use the steady shear experiments to
characterize the difference in response of different crude
sources and blend proportions, blending methodologies
and the influence of aging. Also apparent viscosity
measurements were evaluated for all the blends to
investigate the viscous properties. The crude source, the
blending proportions and the blending process had
significant influence on the behaviour of the material.
The effect of aging on the behavior of the material and its
influence on the temperature susceptibility was also
clearly seen. The information from this on going
investigations is very useful from the perspective of
designing a proper blending process, selecting a particular
crude source and fixing appropriate blend proportions to
the feed stock to meet the requirements of producing a
paving asphalt of a particular grade and to understand its
temperature susceptibility properties.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Financial assistance for conducting this research was
made possible from the new faculty research grant given
by Indian Institute of Technology Madras and the
sponsored research project given by Chennai Petroleum
Corporation Limited, Chennai, India. Both the sources are
gratefully acknowledged.
REFERENCES
Akhmetova, R.S. and Glozman, E.P. (1974) Methods of
selecting raw material composition for asphalt
production. In Khimiya i Tekhnologiya Topliv i
Masel, 10: 23-32.