Application of infrared spectroscopy in combination with chemometric algorithms for determining the presence of styrene-butadiene block copolymer in bitumen products

Abstract

At present polymer-bitumen binders (PBB), including those containing styrene-butadiene copolymer (SBC), are widely used for improving the performance of asphalt concrete coverings. Qualitative detection of the polymer in the petroleum bitumen composition is a difficult research task owing to the low content of the polymer in the PBB composition. Existing methods for determining the polymer in petroleum bitumen are based on a complex multi-stage extraction or on measuring the specific characteristic viscosity of the polymer in the analyzed PBB. These methods are time-consuming and labor-intensive, and require application of a number of specific organic solvents and reference standards. The present work considers the possibility of applying infrared spectroscopy of disturbed total internal reflection (ATR) with subsequent processing of spectra using chemometric algorithms in the study of PBB containing SBC. Application of the principal component analysis (PCA), as well as one-class classification method, the method of soft independent modeling of class analogy (DD-SIMCA), is illustrated. The use of infrared spectroscopy in combination with chemometric data processing methods greatly simplifies and accelerates the research task of detection SBS in bitumen products. The objective of this work was to solve the classification and identification problem in the course of studying bitumen products, i.e. attributing/non-attributing a bitumen product to PBB with SBS.