Anionic Bitumulch Emulsified Bitumen (Mulch Treatment):

Mulch is used to cope with dust and sand dune stabilisation. Dusts brings great damages to farming lands, urban and industrial plants which are in the vicinity of deserts. Researches in the past years have shown use of oil mulch causes creating more pollutions over time through distribution of harmful vapors resulted by heavy crude oil refining; besides, it has high costs and difficult implementation. Life time of oil mulch is 1 to 3 years while it doesn’t have proper resistance against 130 km winds. It will cause accelerating gradual decay and crushing time of stabilising layer and consequently, will help to increase the life of dust. Therefore, Bitumulch is produced with the aim of resolving oil mulch shortcomings and improving sand dune stabilisation plans in Iran. It is economic and has acceptable technical quality in comparison with biologic and oil mulch. Some properties of Bitumulch are as the following:

• Cheaper price in comparison with biologic and oil mulch
• Lower implementation costs. (oil mulch needs heating and consequently very high costs are imposed to projects for site equipping. Whiles, immediately after storm starts, mulching operation will be stopped and cost of reheating will be imposed to the project.)
• Ability to use available equipment and devices for oil mulch with no need to warm-up.
• Oil mulch has phytotoxic influence because of heat and aromatic compounds and stabilising operation is not done completely. (which contains growth of plant species 2 to 3 years after mulching; whiles, emulsified mulch has the least phytotoxic effect. It means that sand dune stabilisation is done perfectly after plant germination and growth (in plant rooting out and growth)
• Amount of emulsified mulch consumption is 4-6 tonnes per hectare because of producing process (which cause to create a thin and netting bitumen film over the surface) whiles, oil mulch is used 8 to 10 tonnes per hectare.

Bitumulch is one type of anionic emulsified bitumen and cohesion promoter. This product is manufactured by the company for the first time in Iran and has been applied in Bam city in cooperation with forests and pastures organisation.