Every bitumen product on this site begins as the same material. What separates the families is what has been done to it afterwards, and which measuring system is used to describe the result.
Bitumen is the residue left at the bottom of the vacuum distillation column once crude oil has given up its lighter fractions. On its own that fact is not very useful to a buyer, but it explains why the catalogue is shaped the way it is: there is one base material and four things that can be done with it. Every family below sits on one of those four routes, and knowing which route you are on prevents the most expensive category of ordering mistake — buying a product from the wrong route because the grade names looked similar.
Paving bitumen is sold in the physical form it is produced in. What differs between the three paving families is not the product but the yardstick: needle penetration measured at 25 °C, absolute viscosity measured at 60 °C, or the two pavement temperatures the binder has been proved to survive. These are the penetration grade, viscosity grade and performance grade families. Treat them as three languages describing one class of material, not as three different materials.
Blowing air through hot bitumen drives dehydrogenation and polymerisation reactions that build larger molecules. The result — oxidized bitumen — has a much higher softening point and a much lower penetration than the feed it came from, and it no longer behaves like a paving binder at all. It is not interchangeable with paving grades in either direction. Polymer modified bitumen takes the opposite approach: the binder keeps its paving character but a polymer network is dispersed through it to widen the temperature range over which it still works.
At ambient temperature bitumen is a solid, and there are only two practical ways to spray it without heating it to 150 °C. Dilute it with a petroleum solvent and you have a cutback. Disperse it as microscopic droplets in water with an emulsifier and you have an emulsion. In both cases the carrier leaves after application and a continuous bitumen film remains. Commercially they are very different animals: a cutback is a flammable liquid, with the classification, labelling and stowage consequences that follow, while an emulsion is water-based but metastable and will be ruined by freezing, by overheating or by the wrong tank lining.
Blending mineral filler into a blown base produces materials engineered for a duty rather than for a specification band: enamel grade for external pipeline coating, and the industrial compounds used in sealants, jointing materials, membrane saturation and insulation board.
Two materials arrive in the same conversation and come from outside that scheme entirely. Natural asphalt, of which gilsonite is the best-known form, is a solid hydrocarbon mined from rock rather than distilled from crude; it is bought on softening point, ash, moisture and solubility, and it is used as a hardening and stiffening additive to a refinery binder rather than as a binder on its own. Reclaimed asphalt pavement is milled road surfacing whose binder is already oxidised, so a mix containing it needs a softer fresh binder or a rejuvenator to bring the blended binder back into range. Neither is covered by ASTM D946 or EN 12591 and neither can be substituted for a paving grade — but both change which paving grade you ought to be buying, which is the only reason they sit in a bitumen index at all.
A grade name on its own is not a specification. "Bitumen 60/70" names a penetration band and nothing else. "Bitumen 60/70 to ASTM D946" names a document that also fixes flash point, solubility, ductility and ageing behaviour, and that is what makes a claim enforceable later. Whenever you take a grade out of this index and into an enquiry, an offer or a purchase order, carry the governing standard with it. Each family page below gives both, the full property tables sit in the specification library, and the document that proves the standard was actually met on your cargo is the batch Certificate of Analysis — which is why the grade name, the standard and the COA have to agree with one another before a cargo is accepted.
The first is between a product standard and a construction specification. A product standard — ASTM D946, EN 12591, IS 73:2013, GB/T 15180 — describes the binder in the drum, and it is what a sales contract should name. A construction specification — JTG F40 in China, or a national highway authority's series of clauses elsewhere — describes the pavement, tells the engineer which binder to select for it, and can impose limits the product standard does not carry. The two documents are written by different bodies for different readers. A cargo can satisfy the product standard named in your contract and still be refused against the construction specification governing the road, and that argument is unwinnable after loading.
The second is the edition. Standards are revised, grade lists change between revisions, and test methods are withdrawn and replaced. A contract that names a standard without an edition inherits whichever version is current at the date of shipment unless it says otherwise, which is usually acceptable but should be a decision rather than an accident. Where a project document names an edition explicitly, carry that edition into the enquiry, because a certificate written to a later revision may report against a different set of lines.
Most buyers arrive holding an application and a budget, not a grade. Four questions eliminate the wrong families faster than any grade table, and they eliminate them on physics rather than on price.
The catalogue below is arranged by family because that is how the material is produced. It is not how a job is specified. A site engineer knows the layer, the plant available and the season; the grade name is the last thing they arrive at, not the first. So work in the order the site works in, and answer these four questions before you look at a single number.
This is the largest group by tonnage and the simplest to route. If the binder is going to be heated, mixed with graded aggregate and laid by a paver, you are buying a paving grade, and the only remaining question is which of the four measuring systems your specification speaks. That question is answered by the destination and the project document, never by preference: India and much of South Asia work in viscosity grades, the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia in penetration grades, AASHTO-derived specifications in performance grades, and Chinese projects in a climate-zone class. Once the system is fixed, the grade follows from climate and loading — harder where surface temperatures are high and traffic is slow or channelised, softer where winters are cold or the compaction window is short.
The pages that carry this group are penetration grade bitumen, viscosity grade bitumen and performance grade bitumen, with road construction bitumen and bitumen for asphalt plants approaching the same material from the duty rather than the classification. If you are unsure how the grade choice interacts with gradation and binder content, mix design basics is written for the buyer rather than the designer.
The moment a binder has to stay where it is put on a slope, a wall or a hot roof, the governing property stops being penetration and becomes softening point. That is why this group exists and why paving grades cannot serve it. ASTM D312 divides roofing asphalt into Types I to IV by softening point band — approximately 57 to 66 °C for Type I rising to approximately 99 to 107 °C for Type IV — and the type is selected from the slope of the roof, because on a hot-applied product the only thing resisting flow down a slope is the softening point. A 60/70 paving grade, whose softening point sits in the high forties, is not a candidate at any slope.
The same logic covers waterproofing compounds, sealants, jointing materials, board saturation and pipeline enamel. Enamel is the extreme case: it is judged on softening point, penetration, filler content, sag and impact against a pipeline coating standard, and its paving properties are irrelevant. Route to oxidized bitumen, roofing bitumen, waterproofing bitumen, industrial bitumen and bitumen enamel grade. If the deliverable is a finished sheet rather than a drum of binder, SBS and APP membranes is the page: the membrane buyer is not buying a bitumen grade, the membrane manufacturer is.
Prime coats, tack coats, surface dressing, slurry seals, fog seals, dust palliatives, stockpiled patching material: all of these are applied by a distributor bar, a slurry machine or a shovel, and none of them can wait for an asphalt plant. That leaves emulsion and cutback, and the choice between them is made on four grounds rather than on price.
Route to bitumen emulsion, emulsion grades and cutback bitumen. Two operations in this group are confused more often than any others on this site, and they are not the same job done twice: prime coat versus tack coat sets out why. The surface treatments themselves have their own pages: surface dressing and chip seal, and slurry seal and micro-surfacing.
You are in this group when the specification asks for behaviour a straight binder does not have: rutting resistance beyond what the hardest sensible paving grade delivers, low-temperature cracking resistance beyond what the softest one delivers, or both at once on the same road. The tell is in the vocabulary. Elastic recovery appears in IS 15462 and EN 14023. Storage stability and separation are checked by the cigar tube test under EN 13399 or ASTM D7173. Traffic designations S, H, V and E come from AASHTO M332 and the multiple stress creep recovery test.
There is also an arithmetic tell in a performance grade name. Add the high number to the magnitude of the low number and you have the useful temperature interval the binder must cover: PG 64-22 spans 86 °C, PG 76-22 spans 98 °C. As a rule of thumb rather than a specification rule, an interval much beyond about 90 °C is not usually reachable with an unmodified binder, so the grade name itself hints at whether modification is in the contract even where the word polymer never appears. Route to polymer modified bitumen and crumb rubber modified bitumen.
They sometimes do, and the tie is broken by what the receiving end can physically do rather than by the material. Structural waterproofing can be executed hot with a blown grade or cold with an emulsion or cutback coating: the deciding question is whether the site can run a kettle safely. Surface dressing can be done with a hot soft paving grade or with a rapid-setting emulsion: the deciding question is whether a heated distributor is available and whether traffic has to return within the hour. A pavement in a hot climate under heavy slow loading can be answered with a harder paving grade or with a modified binder: the deciding question is whether the plant can agitate a modified binder and whether the specification permits substitution. In every case, settle the destination capability before the family, because it is the constraint that cannot be negotiated after the cargo has loaded.
Four classification systems, one class of product. Which one you use is decided by the specification in front of you and by the country the road is in — not by preference, and never by converting a certificate you already hold.
A standard needle loaded with 100 g is allowed to sink into a conditioned sample for 5 seconds at 25 °C, and the depth reached is recorded in tenths of a millimetre. Land between 60 and 70 dmm and the material is a 60/70. The method is ASTM D5, and identically EN 1426 and IS 1203. A lower number means a harder binder, which is the first thing that catches people out.
This is the commercial language of the Middle East, South Asia and most of Africa, and it is the family with the most grade pages here: 20/30, 30/40, 30/45, 35/50, 40/50, 50/70, 60/70, 70/100, 80/100, 85/100, 120/150 and 200/300. The American and European standards draw the bands differently — ASTM D946 names 40/50, 60/70, 85/100, 120/150 and 200/300, while the grades named in EN 12591 include 20/30, 30/45, 35/50, 40/60, 50/70, 70/100, 100/150, 160/220 and 250/330. That is why 50/70, 35/50 and 70/100 sit in the same index as 60/70 and 85/100: they are not duplicates, they are the counterpart grades from the other standard. A specification written against EN 12591 does not automatically accept a grade named under ASTM D946, and an engineer is entitled to say so.
The philosophy is worth stating plainly, because it is the source of everything the system cannot do. Penetration grading takes one measurement, at one temperature, on unaged binder. It is fast, cheap, reproducible and understood everywhere. It says nothing whatever about how the binder flows at 60 °C in a summer pavement, nothing about how it cracks at −20 °C in a winter one, and nothing about how much of its consistency it will lose during mixing and service. The standards close part of that gap with separate lines for softening point, ductility, solubility, flash point and retained penetration after the thin film oven test, but the grade name carries only the needle.
Viscosity grading replaces the bench-temperature needle reading with absolute viscosity at 60 °C, measured in poise by a vacuum capillary viscometer under IS 1206 (Part 2) or ASTM D2171. The reason is straightforward: 60 °C is roughly what the top of a bituminous layer reaches on a hot afternoon, so the measurement is taken where the binder actually has to work. The grade number is the nominal viscosity in hundreds of poise, and the acceptance band runs about ±20 % around it — 800 to 1200 poise for VG-10, 2400 to 3600 poise for VG-30.
Four grades are published: VG-10, VG-20, VG-30 and VG-40. VG-10 is the spray and seal grade and the usual feedstock for emulsion and cutback plants; VG-30 is the dense-graded highway grade for hot climates; VG-40 is for slow, standing or channelised loading. India moved from penetration to viscosity grading with IS 73:2013, and the standard also specifies ageing on RTFOT residue rather than TFOT — a detail worth knowing because a certificate quoting a TFOT result against an IS 73 specification has not tested what the standard asks for.
Two features distinguish the philosophy from penetration grading. The first is that the measurement is taken at a service temperature rather than a bench temperature, which makes the grade directly relevant to rutting. The second is that IS 73:2013 brings ageing inside the grade by capping the viscosity ratio at 60 °C after RTFOT at 4.0 — the ratio of aged viscosity to original viscosity. That single line is the only place in either of the first two systems where the grade itself constrains how the binder ages, and it is the bridge towards performance grading. Note also what the narrow bands imply for storage: a VG-30 parcel that ships at 3200 poise has 400 poise of headroom before it leaves its own grade, and hot storage spends that headroom.
A grade written PG 64-22 is the only classification whose name is a pair of temperatures the pavement will actually reach: it was proved at a 64 °C high pavement design temperature and at −22 °C low. Both ends move in 6 °C steps, which is why the published grades run 52, 58, 64, 70, 76 and 82 at the high end and −10, −16, −22, −28 and lower at the low end. Ten grades are published here, from PG 52-10 through PG 58-22, PG 64-22 and PG 70-10 to PG 76-16.
Getting to a PG designation requires a test sequence rather than a single reading, and the sequence is the philosophy. Under AASHTO M320 or ASTM D6373 the binder is tested in three states. Original binder gives rotational viscosity by ASTM D4402, capped at 3.0 Pa·s at 135 °C so that the binder can still be pumped and mixed, and a dynamic shear rheometer result under ASTM D7175 of at least 1.00 kPa for the complex modulus divided by the sine of the phase angle. RTFO-aged residue, produced under ASTM D2872 at 163 °C for 85 minutes, must reach at least 2.20 kPa on the same rutting parameter — the short-term ageing of mixing and laying is simulated before the binder is judged. PAV-aged residue under ASTM D6521, which subjects the RTFO residue to 20 hours of pressurised air, is then tested by DSR for fatigue and by bending beam rheometer under ASTM D6648, where creep stiffness must not exceed 300 MPa and the m-value must be at least 0.300.
The consequence is that a PG grade contains information about ageing behaviour that no penetration or viscosity number carries, because most of the criteria are applied to material that has already been aged in the laboratory. That is exactly why a PG designation cannot be inferred from a penetration certificate: the tests that define it were never run.
One further layer sits on top. AASHTO M332 and the multiple stress creep recovery test under AASHTO T350 replaced the older habit of bumping the grade upward for heavy or slow traffic. MSCR is run on RTFO residue at the high grade temperature and reports the non-recoverable creep compliance Jnr at 3.2 kPa, with traffic designations set at 4.5 kPa−1 or less for S (standard), 2.0 or less for H (heavy), 1.0 or less for V (very heavy) and 0.5 or less for E (extremely heavy), together with a cap on the Jnr difference between stress levels. If your project document names an M332 traffic designation, an M320 certificate does not answer it, and no amount of correspondence will make it do so. The full test-by-test treatment is on the performance grading guide.
A fourth system is in daily use and it is not a variant of the other three. In China a grade is not chosen from a catalogue at all. The site is first classified with a three-part climate-zone code under JTG F40, in which the first digit is the summer division taken from the hottest month's mean maximum air temperature, the second is the winter division taken from the extreme minimum air temperature, and the third is the rainfall division. A code such as 1-4-1 or 2-2-2 is what a Chinese engineer works from, and only after the code is fixed does a grade designation follow.
The designations themselves are penetration bands with a quality class attached. GB/T 15180 names the AH series — AH-30, AH-50, AH-70, AH-90, AH-110 and AH-130 — where the number is the nominal penetration at the centre of the band, so AH-70 covers 60 to 80 dmm at 25 °C. JTG F40 writes the same bands as 30#, 50#, 70#, 90#, 110# and 130#, then divides each into A, B and C classes carrying progressively lighter requirements, with the class rather than the number deciding what traffic the binder may carry.
Three consequences follow for anyone quoting into that market. The bands are not the ASTM or EN bands: AH-70 is 60 to 80 dmm, not 60 to 70, so a compliant 60/70 sits comfortably inside the Chinese band while a compliant Chinese 70# may sit outside the ASTM one. The class letter is an entirely separate acceptance dimension with no counterpart in ASTM D946 at all. And because selection runs from the climate code, a Chinese enquiry that names only a number has not yet told you which class or which zone it is for — that is a question to ask before pricing, not after. The three pages that carry this in full are the climate zones and their boundaries, JTG F40 and GB/T 15180.
People try, constantly, and the reason it fails is not that the conversion factors are hard to find. It is that the four systems measure different quantities, at different temperatures, on differently aged material, and two of them are not measurements at all in the same sense.
The physical obstacle is temperature susceptibility. Two binders can have identical penetration at 25 °C and different softening points, because the rate at which consistency changes with temperature is set by crude source and processing route rather than by the grade name. Different susceptibility means different viscosity at 60 °C and different stiffness at −20 °C from the same needle reading. The number that expresses this is the penetration index computed from penetration and softening point together: straight-run paving binders typically land between about −1 and +1, and blown grades far higher. A conversion from penetration to viscosity is therefore only ever valid within a family of binders that share a susceptibility, and it carries scatter of the order of a grade band.
Layered on top of that is the ageing problem. Penetration grading measures unaged binder. The critical PG criteria are applied to RTFO and PAV residue. There is no arithmetic that manufactures an ageing result from a measurement that was taken before ageing, which is why a penetration certificate can never evidence a PG grade no matter how many correlations are consulted. And the Chinese system adds a dimension that is not a number at all: the A, B and C class is a bundle of separate requirements, so even a perfect band match leaves the class unanswered.
The practical rule is short. An equivalence table is a shortlisting tool; a test report is a compliance statement. Use a cross-reference to work out which grade to ask a supplier for, then require a certificate reporting the tests the destination standard actually names. Where you must offer a grade from a different system than the one specified, get the engineer's written approval before the cargo is produced, not after it arrives. The mappings, including the ones that look right and are not, are set out in full on the grade equivalence page; nothing on this hub reproduces them.
Four things matter commercially and are absent from every grade designation in every system. Adhesion belongs to the binder and the aggregate together, not to the binder alone, so no certificate can predict it and no grade name implies it — see adhesion and anti-stripping. Wax content is separately limited in the Chinese market and is invisible in a penetration band; see wax content. Flash point varies with grade and with standard, and counter-intuitively the softest grades carry the lowest floors — ASTM D946 requires a minimum of 232 °C for 60/70 but only 177 °C for 200/300. And whether the binder will still be in grade when it arrives depends on how it was held hot, which is a logistics question rather than a specification one.
Read the third and fourth columns together: they are what makes each system internally consistent and untranslatable into the others. The last column is the one that decides whether a certificate you already hold answers the specification in front of you.
| Grading system | What is measured | At what temperature | On what state of the binder | Standard that defines the grades | What the grade name does not tell you |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Penetration grading | Depth a 100 g needle sinks in 5 s, reported in tenths of a millimetre | 25 °C, a bench temperature no pavement experiences | Original binder, unaged | ASTM D946 and EN 12591; measured by ASTM D5, EN 1426 or IS 1203 | Anything about behaviour at pavement temperature at either end of the year, and anything about how the binder ages |
| Viscosity grading | Absolute viscosity in poise, by vacuum capillary viscometer | 60 °C, roughly the summer temperature of the top of a bituminous layer | Original binder for the AC and VG series; aged residue for the AR series | ASTM D3381 for AC and AR grades, IS 73:2013 for VG grades; measured by ASTM D2171 or IS 1206 (Part 2) | Low-temperature behaviour. IS 73:2013 caps the viscosity ratio after RTFOT at 4.0, which is the only ageing line inside the grade |
| Performance grading, AASHTO M320 | Rotational viscosity, complex modulus and phase angle by DSR, creep stiffness and m-value by BBR | Across the service range: 135 °C for pumpability, the high grade temperature for rutting, an intermediate temperature for fatigue, and the low grade temperature plus 10 °C for cracking | Original, RTFO-aged and PAV-aged binder, in that sequence | AASHTO M320 or ASTM D6373, using ASTM D4402, D7175, D2872, D6521 and D6648 | How the binder responds to repeated heavy loading, which is precisely the gap AASHTO M332 was introduced to close |
| Performance grading with MSCR traffic designation, AASHTO M332 | Non-recoverable creep compliance and percent recovery under repeated creep and recovery cycles | The high grade temperature only | RTFO residue | AASHTO M332, measured by AASHTO T350 | Anything about low temperature; the BBR criteria still come from the M320 side of the specification |
| Chinese climate-zone class | Not a measurement — a site classification followed by a penetration band and a quality class | Zone boundaries are set on hottest-month mean maximum air temperature, extreme minimum air temperature and annual rainfall | Original binder, with a separate ageing residue block written into each class | JTG F40 for the zones and the A, B and C classes; GB/T 15180 for the AH designations | Which class is intended, and which zone the road is in, if the enquiry names only a number |
Five families that are no longer ordinary paving bitumen, each created for a job that paving bitumen cannot do, plus three material groups that are not refinery bitumen at all but change which grade you should buy.
Air-blown to raise the softening point and drop the penetration. The grade name is the trap: 85/25 means a softening point near 85 °C and a penetration near 25 dmm — it is not a penetration range. Grades 85/25, 90/15, 95/25 and 115/15 are published, covering roofing, membrane manufacture and sealing compounds, and mapping onto the ASTM D312 roofing asphalt types.
Paving bitumen diluted with a petroleum solvent so it can be sprayed or mixed at low temperature, after which the solvent evaporates and the binder cures back. RC, MC and SC denote rapid, medium and slow cure, set by the volatility of the diluent — naphtha, kerosene and gas oil respectively. The number is the lower bound of the kinematic viscosity band at 60 °C in centistokes under ASTM D2170, so MC-250 runs 250 to 500 cSt. It is a flammable liquid, not a hot binder.
Bitumen broken into droplets and held in water by an emulsifier, so it sprays cold and breaks on contact with aggregate. Cationic and anionic families, with RS, MS, SS and QS setting speeds. Used for tack coats, prime coats, slurry seals, micro-surfacing and cold mix. Storage is the risk: it will not survive freezing, and it must not be heated like a paving grade.
An elastomer such as SBS, a plastomer, or crumb rubber dispersed into paving bitumen to widen the working temperature range — better rutting resistance in heat, better fatigue and cracking resistance in cold. Specified under IS 15462, EN 14023 or a PG grade, with separation checked by the cigar tube test under EN 13399 or ASTM D7173. It carries a hot storage life and normally needs agitation, which changes what a receiving plant has to be able to do.
A hot-applied, mineral-filled compound for external corrosion protection of buried and submerged steel pipe, applied over a primer and reinforced with glass fibre inner wrap and an outer wrap. Judged on softening point, penetration, filler content, sag and impact — not on paving properties. Petroleum bitumen enamel and coal-tar enamel are different products routinely confused under one word.
Road construction, asphalt plant supply, roofing, waterproofing and industrial bitumen are not separate chemistries — they are the same families indexed by duty instead of by classification. If you know the job but not the grade system, those pages are the shorter route in, and they hand you back to the family pages above.
A solid hydrocarbon mined from rock rather than distilled from crude, supplied as lump, granule or powder in bags and bought on softening point, ash, moisture and solubility. No paving-grade product standard applies to it. It is a hardening and stiffening additive to a refinery binder, and its dosage belongs to the mix design rather than to any grade table, so it is never a substitute for a paving grade.
Factory-made bituminous sheet, not a drum of binder. SBS modification gives cold flexibility for cooler climates and mechanically fastened work; APP modification gives heat resistance and is the torch-applied route. The membrane is bought against its own product standard and its thickness, reinforcement and surfacing, so the grade conversation belongs to the manufacturer rather than the specifier.
Milled road surfacing whose binder is already oxidised. Adding it to a mix stiffens the blended binder, so the fresh binder is chosen softer than the virgin mix would use, or a rejuvenator is dosed to bring the blend back into range. The percentage of RAP is therefore a binder-selection decision as much as a materials one, and it changes the grade you should be ordering.
One row per family, on what it actually is, how it arrives, which standard a contract should cite, the temperature at which it is worked, and — the column most worth reading first — what it is wrong for. Eliminating families on the last column is faster than selecting on the first four.
| Family | What it is | How it is supplied | Governing standards | Temperature at which it is used | What it is wrong for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Penetration grade paving bitumen | Vacuum distillation residue classified by needle penetration at 25 °C, 100 g, 5 s | Hot-poured into new steel drums at 150, 180 or 185 kg, jumbo or meltable bags at 1 MT, bitutainer, or bulk vessel | ASTM D946 or EN 12591; measured by ASTM D5, EN 1426 or IS 1203 | Stored about 140–165 °C by grade and mixed with aggregate at about 140–165 °C; the softer the grade, the lower the whole window | Anything applied without heat, anything that must resist flow on a slope, and any specification written in PG grades or in a Chinese class |
| Viscosity grade paving bitumen | The same material classified by absolute viscosity at 60 °C in poise | As for penetration grades: drums, bags, bitutainer or bulk | IS 73:2013 and ASTM D3381; measured by IS 1206 (Part 2) or ASTM D2171 | Stored about 140–170 °C by grade and mixed at about 140–175 °C, with VG-40 at the top of both ranges | Contracts written to EN 12591 or ASTM D946, neither of which recognises a VG designation at all |
| Performance grade binder | Paving binder proved by rheology at both ends of the pavement's service range, on laboratory-aged material | Bulk and bitutainer where heated discharge exists; drums where the route requires it | AASHTO M320 or ASTM D6373, with AASHTO M332 where an MSCR traffic designation is specified | Conventional paving plant temperatures. ASTM D4402 caps rotational viscosity at 3.0 Pa·s at 135 °C precisely so that it remains pumpable there | Being evidenced by penetration and softening point. Without DSR, RTFO, PAV and BBR results, a PG designation is a label rather than a grade |
| Polymer modified bitumen | Paving bitumen with an elastomer, plastomer or crumb rubber dispersed through it to widen the working range | Drums and bulk, with agitation and a stated hot storage life | IS 15462, EN 14023, or AASHTO M332 where PG grading applies; separation by EN 13399 or ASTM D7173 | Stored about 160–180 °C with agitation, mixed about 165–185 °C, with 190 °C treated as a hard ceiling | Long static hot storage, and any plant that cannot agitate or circulate. The polymer separates and what leaves the top of the tank is not what went in |
| Oxidized (blown) bitumen | Bitumen reacted with air at high temperature so that softening point rises sharply and penetration falls | New steel drums, blocks, and meltable bags or cartons for some grades | ASTM D312 for roofing types I to IV, plus the buyer's national standard | Melted and held about 180–200 °C for the softer grades and 200–230 °C for 115/15 and harder, never above the producer's finished blowing temperature | Hot-mix paving. Its low ductility and low temperature susceptibility are exactly the properties a pavement binder must not have |
| Enamel grade bitumen | A blown base compounded with mineral filler for external corrosion protection of steel pipe | Blocks in cartons, multi-wall bags, 200 kg drums, jumbo bags | BS EN 10300, plus the pipeline coating standard named in the project | Melted in a kettle and applied hot over a primed pipe, inside the window the coating standard sets | Any duty judged on paving properties. It is specified on softening point, penetration, filler content, sag and impact, and coal-tar enamel is a different product under the same word |
| Cutback bitumen | Paving bitumen diluted with a petroleum solvent so it can be sprayed or mixed near ambient temperature | Sealed new steel drums, labelled and declared as a flammable liquid | ASTM D2027 and AASHTO M82 for MC, ASTM D2028 and AASHTO M81 for RC, ASTM D2026 and AASHTO M141 for SC; flash point by ASTM D3143 | Sprayed warm: roughly 30–60 °C for MC-30 rising to about 140 °C for MC-3000. Never hot-stored at any grade | Hot storage of any kind, and any site where solvent emissions are restricted. MC-30 and MC-70 carry a flash point minimum of only 38 °C under ASTM D2027 |
| Bitumen emulsion | Bitumen dispersed as droplets in water with an emulsifier, breaking on contact with aggregate | New steel drums with expansion headspace, IBC totes, insulated road tanker or ISO tank | ASTM D977 for anionic, ASTM D2397 for cationic, IS 8887; settlement and storage stability by ASTM D6930 | Sprayed cold to warm. Held above about 4 °C and below about 85 °C, with the exact window set by the grade | Freezing, which destroys it irreversibly; hot storage at paving temperatures; and galvanised, aluminium or copper surfaces for the acidic cationic grades |
| Natural asphalt and gilsonite | A solid hydrocarbon mined from rock rather than distilled from crude | Lump, granule or powder in bags | No paving-grade product standard applies; bought on softening point, ash, moisture and solubility | Added to a hot binder or fed to the mixer at normal plant temperatures | Being treated as a binder in its own right. It is a hardening additive whose dosage is fixed by the mix design |
Read the left column for the work in front of you, then take the family and the page named on the right. The middle columns exist because the application method — hot mixed, hot sprayed, cold sprayed, cold mixed — is usually what eliminates the families that will not work, before any grade number is discussed.
| Job on site | How it is applied | Family to specify | Grades usually named | Page to open next |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hot-mix asphalt, wearing and binder course, hot climate | Mixed hot at 150–165 °C at a batch or drum plant | Penetration or viscosity paving grade | 60/70, 50/70, VG-30 | Penetration Grade Bitumen |
| Hot-mix asphalt in a cool, coastal or high-altitude area | Mixed hot, laid in a shorter compaction window | Softer paving grade | 80/100, 85/100, 120/150 | Penetration Grade Bitumen |
| Heavy axle loads, slow or channelised traffic, extreme surface heat | Mixed hot | Hard paving grade, or a modified binder if rutting governs | 40/50, 30/40, VG-40, PMB | Viscosity Grade Bitumen |
| Project specification written in PG grades | Mixed hot | Performance grade binder | PG 58-22, PG 64-16, PG 70-10 | Performance Grade Bitumen |
| Road in a Chinese province specified to JTG F40 | Mixed hot | A numbered Chinese grade with a quality class, selected from the site's climate-zone code | 70#, 90# or 50#, in class A or B | China Bitumen Climate Zones |
| Hot mix produced at a reduced mixing temperature | Mixed hot with a warm-mix additive, foamed water or an organic wax | The same paving grade, with the warm-mix technology named separately | 60/70, 50/70 or VG-30, plus the additive | Warm Mix Asphalt |
| Mix containing reclaimed asphalt pavement | Mixed hot, with the aged binder in the RAP counted as part of the total binder | A softer paving grade than the virgin mix would use, or a rejuvenator | 70/100 or 80/100 in place of 60/70, at a dosage set by the mix design | Recycled Asphalt Pavement |
| Binder that must be stiffer without adding a polymer | Fed to the binder or the mixer at plant temperature | Natural asphalt as an additive to a paving grade | Gilsonite lump or powder, dosage from the mix design | Natural Asphalt & Gilsonite |
| Prime coat on a granular or stabilised base | Sprayed cold to warm, left to penetrate and cure | Medium-curing cutback, or emulsion where solvent use is restricted | MC-30, MC-70 | Cutback Bitumen |
| Tack coat between asphalt layers | Sprayed cold, usually diluted | Cationic emulsion | Rapid and slow setting cationic grades | Bitumen Emulsion |
| Cold mix and stockpiled patching material | Mixed cold, stored, laid without heating | Cutback or medium-setting emulsion | MC-250, MC-800, MS grades | Cutback Bitumen |
| Surface dressing and chip seal | Sprayed hot, or applied as emulsion | Rapid-setting emulsion, or a soft hot paving grade | CRS grades, 80/100, VG-10 | Surface Dressing & Chip Seal |
| Slurry seal or micro-surfacing | Mixed cold on the machine and spread as a thin layer | Quick-setting or slow-setting cationic emulsion designed for the process | CQS and CSS grades; a polymer modified emulsion for micro-surfacing | Slurry Seal & Micro-surfacing |
| Fog seal or rejuvenation of an oxidised surface | Sprayed cold, heavily diluted with water | Slow-setting emulsion | SS and CSS grades, diluted on site | Bitumen Emulsion Grades |
| Dust control on an unpaved road or shoulder | Sprayed cold, left to soak in | Slow-curing cutback | SC-70, SC-250 | Cutback Bitumen |
| Roofing felt, shingles and bituminous membranes | Applied hot, or used as saturant and coating in manufacture | Oxidized bitumen | 85/25, 95/25 | Oxidized Bitumen |
| Manufacture of SBS or APP torch-applied membrane | Compounded hot in a membrane plant and coated onto a carrier | Modified blown bitumen — SBS for cold flexibility, APP for heat resistance | Compound specified by the membrane standard, not by a paving grade | SBS & APP Membranes |
| Damp-proofing, tanking and structural waterproofing | Applied hot, or cold as an emulsion or cutback coating | Oxidized bitumen, or emulsion for cold application | 90/15, 115/15 | Waterproofing Bitumen |
| External coating of buried or submerged steel pipe | Applied hot over a primer, then wrapped | Enamel grade bitumen | Enamel to the named pipeline coating standard | Bitumen Enamel Grade |
| Sealants, jointing compounds, adhesives, board saturation | Blended hot into a compound | Oxidized and industrial grades | 90/15, 115/15 and harder blown grades | Industrial Bitumen |
| Asphalt plant carrying a mixed workload | Held hot in bulk or remelted from drums | A paving grade for volume, plus a modified binder for special mixes | 60/70 or VG-30, with PMB alongside | Polymer Modified Bitumen |
The families do not simply differ in what they are for. They differ in how they are held, at what temperature, in what vessel, and in what single mistake destroys them — and a delivery that is perfectly compliant can still be unusable if the receiving end assumed the wrong regime.
Almost every buyer plans the specification and almost none plans the handling. That is the wrong way round for three of the eight families, because a cutback, an emulsion and a modified binder can each be ruined at destination by a procedure that is entirely correct for a paving grade. What follows is the shape of the differences and the reasoning behind them. The consolidated numbers — storage, pumping, mixing, compaction and absolute maximum, grade by grade — are on the heating and working temperature guide, and nothing here reproduces that table.
Bulk paving bitumen lives in an insulated, coil-heated tank somewhere between roughly 140 and 165 °C depending on grade. The engineering rule is to hold at the lowest temperature that still allows pumping and accurate metering, and the reason is oxidative hardening. Both of the standard ageing tests are simply a laboratory version of a hot tank: ASTM D1754 conditions a film for five hours at 163 °C, and ASTM D2872 rolls one for 85 minutes at the same temperature. The specification limits written against those residues assume the binder arrives at the plant unhardened. A parcel held for weeks at 170 °C has already spent part of that ageing budget before the aggregate ever sees it, and it is not recoverable.
The commercial consequence is sharpest on viscosity grades, because their bands are narrow. VG-30 runs 2400 to 3600 poise, so a cargo that ships at 3200 poise has 400 poise of headroom before it is out of its own grade. Hot storage spends headroom. On performance grades the consequence is different in kind: the grade is defined on aged material, so prolonged hot storage does not merely move the binder within a band, it moves it off the grade it was certified to.
The other paving-grade handling fact worth carrying is that the flash point floors move with the grade and move in the direction most people do not expect. Under ASTM D946 the minimum is 232 °C for 40/50, 60/70 and 85/100, 218 °C for 120/150 and 177 °C for 200/300. IS 73:2013 sets 220 °C for the VG grades and AASHTO M320 sets 230 °C. The softest grades therefore have the least headroom, which is one reason they are stored cooler — not only to slow ageing.
Drummed and bagged material has a different failure mode: not ageing but melting. A drum heated with a direct flame cokes the binder against the steel long before the centre is molten, which contaminates the melt and wrecks the drum. Melting units, jacketed melters and hot rooms exist for exactly this reason, and a buyer who orders drums without one has bought a handling problem rather than a material.
Nothing about a paving-grade regime transfers to a cutback. It is never hot-stored: the drum sits sealed, under cover, away from ignition sources, at ambient temperature. Its flash point is not measured on the Cleveland open cup used for paving grades but on the Tag open cup under ASTM D3143, because the number being measured is tens of degrees rather than hundreds.
The figures explain the whole handling regime. ASTM D2027 sets a flash point minimum of 38 °C for MC-30 and MC-70 — a temperature a steel drum standing in tropical sun reaches without any help — and 66 °C for MC-250, MC-800 and MC-3000. Those heavier grades are sprayed at 75 to 140 °C, which is to say they are worked above their own flash point by design. ASTM D2028 sets no flash point limit at all for the RC series, whose naphtha diluent can flash at or below ordinary ambient temperature, so the batch certificate is the only figure available for an RC grade.
The rule that follows is not a temperature margin, because for most grades there is none. It is an ignition control regime: indirect heat only, never a naked flame against a tank or drum, bonded and earthed transfers, no hot work in the area, and vapour treated as the hazard rather than the liquid. On the transport side, cutbacks are consigned as flammable liquids — UN 1999, tars liquid including cutback bitumen, is the entry usually applicable — and the exact assignment and packing group follow the measured flash point and viscosity of the grade, which is what the safety data sheet is for.
An emulsion is the only family in this index whose continuous phase is water, and that single fact generates every rule around it. Below 0 °C ice crystals grow through the emulsion and mechanically rupture the emulsifier films around the droplets; the droplets merge, and on thawing what remains is coagulated bitumen under dirty water. The change is irreversible. No amount of heating, stirring or recirculation restores it.
The practical floor is not 0 °C but about 4 °C, because the coldest part of a consignment is never the part anyone measures — the windward drum in a stack, the top of a partly filled tank, the outer container in a stow. Emulsion consigned to a winter destination needs insulated or heated storage arranged before the cargo arrives. At the other end, above roughly 85 °C the water begins to flash off at the surface, a skin forms, and the emulsion thickens and eventually breaks; the workable window narrows further by grade, with the slow-setting grades held cooler than the rapid-setting ones.
Three further rules have no counterpart in any other family. Cationic emulsions are acidic and attack aluminium, zinc, galvanised coatings and copper alloys, so tanks, lines, pumps and valves must be mild steel, stainless or a suitable lining. Cationic and anionic emulsions must never be mixed or pumped through equipment still holding the other, because opposite charges break each other on contact. And emulsion must never enter a vessel that has held hot binder or cutback unless it is confirmed cool and drained — water flashing to steam under hot bitumen expands more than a thousandfold and ejects the contents of the tank. Settlement is managed by gentle recirculation with the return line discharging below the liquid surface; high-shear pumping and air entrainment destabilise the product, and a centrifugal pump running against a closed valve will break a tank of emulsion in minutes. Storage stability itself is a measured property, under ASTM D6930.
Emulsion also has by far the shortest shelf life in the range. Drummed paving bitumen stays serviceable for years; an emulsion's practical life is weeks to a few months and shortens with every temperature excursion. Plan the voyage and the destination storage so the material is used soon after arrival, and require the manufacturing date and batch number on the certificate.
An oxidized grade's softening point is the first number in its name, so an 85/25 softens near 85 °C and a 115/15 near 115 °C. Everything about handling moves upward with that: a material that is still solid at 100 °C cannot be pumped at a temperature that suits a 60/70. In practice the softer blown grades are melted and held around 180 to 200 °C and the harder ones around 200 to 230 °C, which is above the entire working range of every paving grade in this index.
Two ceilings apply rather than one. The first is the flash point — ASTM D312 requires a minimum of 260 °C for roofing asphalt, higher than the general paving floors, because the material is applied close to its ceiling by design. The second is the finished blowing temperature on the producer's data sheet: heating a blown grade above the temperature at which blowing was stopped begins to undo the reaction, and the softening point falls back below the certificate value. That is a quality failure with no visible symptom until the material slumps on a roof, and it is the reason a blown grade should be held hot only for the day's work rather than banked in a kettle overnight.
Hot-applied roofing work adds a further distinction that catches buyers who expect a grade name to be enough: application temperature is set from the batch's equiviscous temperature, which is a producer's number for the specific batch and cannot be inferred from the grade. Enamel grade behaves the same way, with the coating standard rather than the roofing practice setting the window.
A polymer modified binder is a dispersion, not a solution, and it will separate if left standing hot. Storage is around 160 to 180 °C with agitation or slow circulation, 190 °C is the hard ceiling, and long static hot storage is what ends the product. Separation is a measured property: the cigar tube test under EN 13399 or ASTM D7173 holds a sample vertically for 48 hours at 163 °C and compares the top and bottom, and a binder that has separated in a tank cannot be recovered by stirring it. A plant with no agitator has not bought a cheaper way to run PMB; it has bought a binder whose top half and bottom half are different products.
The one handling failure that is common to hot paving grades, blown grades, enamel and emulsion alike is water. One volume of water becomes roughly 1,700 volumes of steam beneath hot binder and ejects it violently. Standing water in a drum, condensate in a transfer line, moisture at a tank bottom and rain into an open hatch are all the same accident waiting for heat to be applied. It is not a temperature problem and no thermostat prevents it; the control is inspection and drainage before heating. The tank-side detail, including coil discipline, level interlocks and why a partly covered heating surface cokes, is on the storage tanks page, and how long each product form keeps is on shelf life and storage. Fume exposure, which rises steeply with temperature rather than in proportion to it, is covered on bitumen fumes and safety.
The fourth column is the one to read before signing anything. Each of these failure modes is destination-side, none of them is visible on a Certificate of Analysis, and all of them happen to cargoes that were fully compliant when they loaded.
| Family and form | How it is held | The rule that governs the temperature | What ends the product | How it travels |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paving grades in drums or bags | Cold and stacked under cover, melted as required | Melt with indirect heat only. A direct flame on a drum cokes the binder against the steel long before the centre is molten | Water in the drum, and repeated remelting of material that has already been through a melt cycle | Not normally regulated as dangerous goods at ambient temperature; confirm against the safety data sheet for the grade |
| Paving grades in bulk or bitutainer | Hot, in an insulated coil-heated tank | Hold at the lowest temperature that still allows pumping and metering. Storage ranges run about 140–165 °C by grade | Prolonged hot storage. The oxidative ageing that ASTM D1754 and ASTM D2872 simulate in hours at 163 °C happens for real in a tank | Carried at or above 100 °C, bulk bitumen is an elevated temperature liquid under UN 3257, Class 9 |
| Performance grade binder | As for bulk paving grades | The same, with the added constraint that ASTM D4402 caps rotational viscosity at 3.0 Pa·s at 135 °C so the binder stays handleable at conventional temperatures | The same ageing, with a different consequence: the grade is defined on aged material, so hot storage moves the binder off its own grade rather than within a band | As for bulk paving grades |
| Polymer modified binder | Hot, agitated or slowly circulated | About 160–180 °C with movement, and 190 °C as a hard ceiling | Static hot storage. Separation is measured by the cigar tube test under EN 13399 or ASTM D7173, 48 h at 163 °C, and a separated binder cannot be recovered by stirring the tank | As for bulk paving grades, plus a stated hot storage life that the delivery schedule has to respect |
| Oxidized (blown) grades | Cold in drums or blocks, melted for the day's work only | Melt and hold about 180–200 °C for the softer grades and 200–230 °C for 115/15 and harder, and never above the producer's finished blowing temperature | Overheating past the finished blowing temperature, which begins to undo the blowing reaction and drops the softening point below the certificate value | Not normally regulated at ambient temperature. ASTM D312 requires a minimum flash point of 260 °C for roofing asphalt, so the kettle rather than the container is where the hazard sits |
| Enamel grade | Cold in blocks, cartons or bags, melted in a kettle at the coating yard | Melted and held inside the window the pipeline coating standard sets, and applied over a primed pipe within it | Overheating, and cross-contamination with another grade or with coal-tar enamel | As for blown grades |
| Cutback | Ambient, in sealed drums, under cover and away from ignition sources | No hot storage in any circumstances. ASTM D2027 sets a flash point minimum of 38 °C for MC-30 and MC-70 and 66 °C for MC-250 and heavier, measured on the Tag open cup under ASTM D3143; ASTM D2028 sets none at all for the RC series | Loss of diluent from an unsealed or sun-exposed drum, which moves the grade; and any naked flame or hot work near the vapour space | Flammable liquid, Class 3, normally under UN 1999 for tars liquid including cutback bitumen. Packing group follows the measured flash point and viscosity and is stated on the safety data sheet |
| Emulsion | Above about 4 °C and below about 85 °C, in mild steel, stainless or a suitably lined vessel | Never let it freeze and never heat it as if it were a paving grade. The exact window narrows by grade, and the 4 °C floor is practical experience rather than a standard requirement | Freezing, which ruptures the droplets irreversibly; air-entraining or high-shear pumping; contact with an uncleaned tank that held cutback or hot binder; and galvanised, aluminium or copper surfaces for the acidic cationic grades | Water-based and commonly not classified as dangerous goods for sea freight, but solvent-containing medium-setting grades are the exception. Confirm against the safety data sheet before booking |
Whichever family you land on, the packing decision arrives next and it moves landed cost more than most buyers plan for. These are the standard loading figures used across this site for hot-poured bitumen.
| Packing | Net weight per unit | Units per 20' FCL | Net cargo per FCL | Families it suits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New steel drum | 150 kg | 80 drums | 12 MT | Paving, oxidized and cutback grades; buyers without heated storage |
| New steel drum | 180 kg | 80 drums | 14.4 MT | Paving and oxidized grades; lower packing cost per tonne than 150 kg |
| New steel drum | 185 kg | 80 drums | 14.8 MT | Paving and oxidized grades where the drum specification allows it |
| Jumbo bag | 1 MT | 20 bags | 20 MT | Paving grades for buyers with a melting unit; no steel to dispose of |
| Poly / meltable bag | 1 MT | 20 bags | 20 MT | Paving grades where the packaging enters the mix with the binder |
| Bitutainer / tank container | 20–25 MT | 1 unit | 20–25 MT | Paving and modified binders where discharge and heating exist |
| Bulk vessel | parcel size | not applicable | parcel scale, normally four figures in tonnes | Paving grades for buyers who have jetty access and heated shore tanks |
Seven steps, in order. Doing them in this order is what stops a specification problem from being discovered after the cargo has loaded.
Use the routing table, not the grade name you were given. A grade name that arrived by email from a third party is the single most common way a buyer ends up in the wrong family — particularly the 85/25 style oxidized names, which are read as penetration ranges more often than not. Run the four questions in the decision structure above before you open any family page: whether the binder will be heated, whether it must hold shape against gravity, whether it goes into a mixture or onto a surface, and whether the specification uses the vocabulary of a modified binder.
Before you name a grade, establish whether the project works in penetration bands, viscosity grades, PG designations or a Chinese climate-zone class, and whether the governing document is a product standard or a construction specification. Getting this wrong produces an offer that is technically excellent and formally non-compliant. Where the systems differ, use the equivalence page to shortlist and then get the substitution approved in writing; a conversion is a comparison, never a compliance statement.
The family pages carry the full grade tables with defining properties, the standard that names each grade, and the applications each one is normally used for. Choose the grade there rather than from a supplier's offer, so that you are comparing offers against your own choice.
If a project specification, national standard or client coating standard exists, read the grade against it line by line before anyone quotes. Where a substitution is needed because the specified system differs from what is available, get the engineer's written approval first.
Heated storage, a melting unit, an agitator, an acid-resistant tank, a distributor bar, storage above freezing in winter: each family assumes a different capability at destination. A polymer modified binder arriving at a plant with no agitation, an emulsion in a tank that last held cutback, a drummed cargo with no melter and bulk bitumen with no heated shore tank are all fully compliant deliveries that cannot be used. Settle this before packing, because it can eliminate a family the routing table left open.
Packing sets container count and destination handling; the Incoterm decides which costs and risks are inside the price. Two offers cannot be compared until both are on the same packing and the same Incoterms 2020 rule with a named port or place.
Grade with its governing standard, quantity, packing, destination port and Incoterm. Add the specification document if you have one, the documentation and inspection you require, and the payment structure you can actually execute. An enquiry containing those can be priced as it stands; one that is missing them turns into a round of questions before anyone can quote, and the answers you get back are worth less because the two sides were pricing different things.
Eight refinery bitumen families — penetration grade, viscosity grade, performance grade, oxidized, cutback, emulsion, polymer modified and enamel grade — broken down into forty individual grade pages: twelve penetration grades from 20/30 to 200/300, four viscosity grades, ten performance grades from PG 52-10 to PG 76-16, four oxidized grades, eight cutback pages covering the MC, RC and SC series, and two named emulsion grades. Twelve further grade pages are written to Chinese designations. Alongside them sit natural asphalt, reclaimed asphalt pavement and bituminous membranes, which are not refinery bitumen families but change which grade you should buy, and seven related petroleum products.
They are three measuring systems applied to the same class of paving binder. Penetration grading reads needle depth at 25 °C, viscosity grading measures absolute viscosity at 60 °C, and performance grading reports the high and low pavement temperatures the aged binder survives under a full DSR and BBR test sequence. What separates them in practice is where on the temperature scale each takes its reading — a bench temperature, a summer pavement temperature, or both ends of the pavement's own service range — and on what state of the binder: penetration and viscosity grading measure unaged material, whereas most of the performance-grade criteria are applied to RTFO-aged and PAV-aged residue. Because none of the three converts arithmetically into the others, a certificate issued under one system does not evidence compliance with a specification written in another; the missing lines are missing, not implied. Supply the system your specification names, and if you cannot, get the substitution approved in writing before production.
Not by arithmetic, and the reason is physical rather than administrative. Two binders can share an identical penetration at 25 °C and have different softening points, because temperature susceptibility is set by crude source and processing route rather than by the grade name — so the same needle reading maps to different viscosities at 60 °C and different stiffness at low temperature. Any penetration-to-viscosity correlation is therefore valid only within a family of binders that share a susceptibility, and it carries scatter of the order of a grade band. Performance grades are worse still, because their governing criteria are measured on RTFO-aged and PAV-aged residue, and no arithmetic produces an ageing result from a measurement taken before ageing. Use the grade equivalence page to shortlist which grade to request; then require a certificate reporting the tests the destination standard actually names.
For conventional hot-mix asphalt in a hot climate, 60/70, 50/70 or VG-30 covers the large majority of work. Cooler or high-altitude areas move to 80/100 or 85/100; heavy axle loads and extreme surface temperatures move to 40/50, VG-40 or a polymer modified binder. Where the specification is written in performance grades, the answer comes from the design pavement temperatures rather than from any of those names, and where it is written to JTG F40 it comes from the site's three-part climate-zone code together with the quality class.
No, and treating it that way causes real failures. Oxidized bitumen has been reacted with air at high temperature, which changes its molecular structure, not merely its consistency. It has a high softening point with low temperature susceptibility and low ductility, which suits roofing and waterproofing but makes it unsuitable as a paving binder. A hardened paving grade and a blown grade with the same penetration will not behave alike, and the handling regimes are different too: blown grades are melted and held above the entire working range of any paving grade.
Where solvent emissions are restricted, where fire risk on site is a concern, or where the work has to be done in damp conditions, an emulsion is the better choice — it carries no flammable solvent, sets by water loss and coats damp aggregate that a cutback would struggle with. Cutbacks still have the advantage on deeply porous or tight bases that need real penetration, and in stockpiled cold mix where a long working life is needed. The trade-off runs the other way in storage: an emulsion is destroyed by freezing and has a shelf life measured in weeks to months, where a sealed cutback drum simply has to be kept away from heat and ignition. Many national authorities are progressively restricting cutback use, so check the destination rules before specifying one.
Three of the eight families, and each fails differently. A cutback is never hot-stored at all: ASTM D2027 sets a flash point minimum of just 38 °C for MC-30 and MC-70, measured on the Tag open cup under ASTM D3143, and ASTM D2028 sets no flash point limit at all for the RC series, so ignition control replaces any temperature margin. An emulsion must be kept above about 4 °C, because freezing ruptures the droplets irreversibly, and below about 85 °C, because above that the water flashes off and the emulsion breaks; the acidic cationic grades also attack aluminium, zinc, galvanised coatings and copper. A polymer modified binder must be agitated or circulated, because static hot storage separates the polymer from the binder and stirring will not put it back. Blown grades go the other way and run hotter than any paving grade, with the producer's finished blowing temperature as a ceiling above the flash point consideration.
Yes. The published range also covers base oil, fuel oil, CST-180, EN590 diesel, LPG, sulfur and urea. These sit on the same enquiry channel as the bitumen range, and each has its own specification anchors — viscosity and API group for base oil, viscosity and sulfur for fuel oils, cetane and sulfur for EN590, purity and moisture for sulfur, nitrogen and biuret for urea.
Petroleum bitumen is classified under HS heading 2713.20, which covers the whole bitumen range on this site. The related petroleum products each have their own headings, and destination countries add national subheadings below the six-digit level. Confirm the full code with your customs broker at the destination before shipment, because duty treatment and any import licensing follow the national code, not the six-digit one.
Yes, and it is usually the better way to do it. List each line separately with the grade and its governing standard, the quantity, the packing and the destination, so that each line can be priced on its own basis rather than averaged. Where the lines come from different families, say so, because a cutback line and an emulsion line on the same enquiry carry different packing, different transport classification and different destination storage requirements even if the tonnage is identical. Everything runs through WhatsApp on +971 56 144 5733, which is the only enquiry channel, so a multi-product requirement stays in one traceable thread.
A grade page tells you what a binder is. These pages tell you what happens to it after you buy it — how it is chosen, stored, heated, tested, specified, shipped and paid for.
Most of what goes wrong with a bitumen consignment goes wrong after the certificate is issued. The binder was correct when it left the tank and incorrect when it reached the mixer; the specification was met and the pavement failed anyway; two offers looked comparable and were not. None of that is visible on a product page, so it lives here instead.
None of these pages is a sales page. If one of them answers your question without you ever contacting us, it has done its job.
Send each line as grade plus governing standard, quantity, packing, destination port and Incoterm. Several products can go on one enquiry, and if you have a project specification, attach it so the grade can be read against it line by line before anything is priced. Everything runs through WhatsApp on +971 56 144 5733, which is the only enquiry channel.