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Gold/Mining/Energy : American International Petroleum Corp -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MARIO PASQUA who wrote (4112)	10/26/1997 3:30:00 PM
From: Laserbones	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 11888

If the following does not fully answer you questions maybe another lurker can: Polymerized asphalt which uses scrap tire-rubber is under a mandate by the government. This is not new technology, as you pointed out with the Europeans, but the use of waste rubber as a modifier for asphalt cements has pros and cons. Problems such as finding the most ideal loading ratios, ideal particle size for the type of waste rubber being used, and the manufacturing process itself which is called supercritical fractionation, need to be standardized and all design parameters and specifications agreed upon by everyone. I may be wrong but conventional asphalt has many accepted test methods such as ASTM, etc. And the specifications required for any manufacturer of conventional asphalt are written in stone. This is not the case with polymerized grades. Things may be different since I was involved in this type of work, but memory tells me that this was/is an open field. And then for this type of asphalt to really become mainstream as a paver, aging studies and accelerated stability programs need to be done and verified by others. I think the polymerized asphalt has major advantages because it allows a "stretching" out of raw asphalt precursors and there is also a substantial energy savings using this type of process. I'm not sure of the exact in-process energy savings but I've been told that they are real. There's also the huge reduction in waste. I don't know how many billions of discarded tires are blighting acreage across the US, but this sure does seem like an excellent use. There is evidence that the polymerized asphalts can be engineerd to possess better flexibility, fracture strength, and target softening points. This would result in longer lasting roads that are more resistence to age cracking and weathering. How does this affect aipn's asphalt plant? First they need to start producing conventional grades while at the same time refining their manufacturing process for the polymerized. I'm sure eventually the polymerized will become mainstream and it wouldn't be a bad idea for any asphalt refiner to have the manufacturing process down and repeatable. Greg