Shell Bitumen - Modified Bitumen for Road Paving and Concrete Surfaces

As part of Shell, one of the world's largest companies, operating in more than 145 countries and employing more than 119,000 people, Shell Bitumen has supplied bitumen to the construction industry for manufacturing roads for more than 80 years.

For the majority of this time, conventional grades of bitumen have been supplied for conventional types of mixtures, but as time has moved on, traffic loads and volumes have increased dramatically. With the increase in loads and volumes, and because of the new technologies being developed, new types of bituminous mixtures were designed and improved bitumen was developed to meet new traffic requirements. One of the major breakthroughs in the construction industry was the development of styrene butadiene styrene (SBS) modified bitumen.

SBS MODIFIED BITUMEN FOR ASPHALT ROAD PAVING MATERIALS

For more than 20 years, Shell Bitumen has manufactured a range of SBS modified binders, which have been developed and used successfully with many types of surface courses, as well as other mixture systems throughout the world. The most common uses include hot rolled asphalt (HRA), asphaltic concrete (AC), porous asphalt (PA), stone mastic asphalts (SMA) and thin surfacings (TS).

The philosophy behind Shell's application of polymer modified bitumen (PMB) is to provide our customers with solutions to the problems that they encounter in their day-to-day practice of road building and maintenance.

SHELL CARIPHALTE FUELSAFE - HIGH-PERFORMANCE BITUMEN FOR INCREASED FUEL RESISTANCE OF ASPHALT MIXTURES

Cariphalte Fuelsafe is today's cost-effective alternative to conventional bitumen for locations that are prone to fuels damage. Highly fuel resistant, Cariphalte Fuelsafe delivers a performance that minimises the risk of deterioration, unexpected repair work and all its associated costs.

It has been demonstrated that Cariphatle Fuelsafe has 20 times more resistance to fuel spillages. This can benefit the owners and operators of sites surfaced with Cariphalte Fuelsafe as its qualities, combined with Shell's know-how, allow them to plan maintenance reliably and build it into even the most carefully managed of budgets. Cariphalte Fuelsafe's reliability means that there will be no unexpected surprises and disruptions on the site.

SHELL MEXPHALTE C - PIGMENTABLE BITUMEN BINDERS

Henry Ford used to say to people wanting to buy a Model-T: "you can have any colour you like, as long as it's black." Until recently, bitumen manufacturers had to say the same thing. But now Shell have developed Mexphalte C a revolutionary pigmentable binder that does for bitumen what Technicolor did for films.

Used in the same way as conventional bitumen binders, Shell Mexphalte C offers considerable advantages over other methods of producing natural and coloured surfaces. It's a synthetic, pigmentable binder, which allows freedom of choice of colours - from natural (no pigment), to yellow and blue. Shell Mexphalte C opens up a variety of creative possibilities for the architect, civil engineer, town planner and private contractor.

The real beauty of Shell Mexphalte C lies in its wide range of aesthetic, environmental and safety applications in bus and cycle lanes, parking bays, roundabouts and private drive ways. Sports and leisure facilities and children's play parks are other areas for creativity with coloured surface applications, as are approaches to historic buildings and monuments. You can also use white pigment in Mexphalte C for underpasses and tunnels to increase reflected light.

Mexphalte C has a successful history globally, especially in France where it is widely used for bicycle lanes and to blend new asphalt surfaces in with historical surroundings in village squares.