"The terms tar and pitch are loosely applied to the many varieties of the two substances, sometimes interchangeably. For example, asphalt, which is naturally occurring pitch, is called mineral tar and mineral pitch. Tar is more or less fluid, depending upon its origin and the temperature to which it is exposed.
Full Answer
What is tar made of?
Tar is a dark brown or black viscous liquid of hydrocarbons and free carbon, obtained from a wide variety of organic materials through destructive distillation. Tar can be produced from coal, wood, petroleum, or peat. Mineral products resembling tar can be produced from fossil hydrocarbons, such as petroleum.
What are tar sands?
Oil sands, almost exclusively produced in Alberta, Canada, are colloquially referred to as "tar sands" but are in fact composed of asphalt, also called bitumen. Tar kiln at Trollskogen in Öland, Sweden.
What is the difference between tar and coal tar?
Coal tar is produced from coal as a byproduct of coke production. "Tar" and " pitch " can be used interchangeably; asphalt (naturally occurring pitch) may also be called either "mineral tar" or "mineral pitch".
What is road tar?
What is Road Tar? Road tar is a black fluid substance and is a blend of liquid asphalt and water. It is used in the construction of roadways, also to seal small cracks, and usually appears on the lower parts of a vehicle or in the wheel well. Tar bitumen are increasingly being used as a binder in road works.
Where is tar commonly found?
Much resinous wood tar is produced in Northern Europe, in the forests of Sweden, Finland, and Russia. This is known as Archangel or Stockholm tar, according to the source. In the United States wood-tar production is centered in the South. Because of its large creosote content, wood tar is used to preserve wood.
Does tar exist in nature?
Tar pits form when crude oil seeps to the surface through fissures in the Earth's crust; the light fraction of the oil evaporates, leaving behind the heavy tar, or asphalt, in sticky pools.
What was tar used for in colonial times?
In the seventeenth century, New England colonists started to produce pine tar from pitch pine. The tar was crucial for the shipbuilding industry, serving as a preservative for the rigging and probably for oakum, a fibrous material that was caulked between planks to make the ship water-tight.
What is tar and where does it come from?
Coal tar is derived from coal. It is a byproduct of the production of coke, a solid fuel that contains mostly carbon, and coal gas. Coal tar is used primarily for the production of refined chemicals and coal-tar products, such as creosote and coal-tar pitch.
Is tar harmful to humans?
Tar is the sticky brown substance that stains smokers' teeth and fingers yellow-brown. It contains cancer causing particles (carcinogens). Tar damages your lungs by narrowing the small tubes (bronchioles) that absorb oxygen. It also damages the small hairs (cilia) that help protect your lungs from dirt and infection.
Can you eat tar?
Exposure to creosotes, coal tar, coal tar pitch, or coal tar pitch volatiles may be harmful to your health. Eating food or drinking water contaminated with a high level of these compounds may cause a burning in the mouth and throat as well as stomach pain.
What is tar good for?
Coal tar is used to treat eczema, psoriasis, seborrheic dermatitis, and other skin disorders. Some of these preparations are available only with your doctor's prescription. This product is available in the following dosage forms: Shampoo.
Where did the Romans get tar from?
This could be an indication that birch was considered in antiquity to be one of the main tar sources—a notion confirmed by archaeological data.
Why is tar not used on roads?
The risks from coal tar to human health and the environment are well documented. Coal tar is classified as Category 1B Carcinogen due to the presence of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs). Road tar may also contain phenols and cresols, some of which are also hazardous to human health.
Why is tar toxic?
Tar contains most of the cancer-causing and other harmful chemicals found in tobacco smoke. When tobacco smoke is inhaled, the tar can form a sticky layer on the inside of the lungs. This damages the lungs and may lead to lung cancer, emphysema, or other lung problems.
What does tar stand for?
Technology Assisted Review (TAR) is a term specific to eDiscovery and the legal document review process.
What was tar used for in the 1800s?
Tar production continued well into the late 1800s when the wide use of steel ships end- ed the need for tar. Pitch was needed to coat the hulls of ships to protect them in tropical waters. Boiling tar and a small amount of turpentine in a large iron pot made pitch.
Is tar made from trees?
Pine tar is a form of wood tar produced by the high temperature carbonization of pine wood in anoxic conditions (dry distillation or destructive distillation). The wood is rapidly decomposed by applying heat and pressure in a closed container; the primary resulting products are charcoal and pine tar.
Are there still tar pits on the earth?
Tar pits are especially important for scientists in areas where fossils don't normally preserve well, such as the Neotropics. Zoom in and click on the map icons to learn about fossiliferous tar pits around the world! There are many asphaltic sites around the world where fossils have been discovered!
Do tar pits exist today?
What are the Tar Pits? The Tar Pits have fascinated scientists and visitors for over a century, and today, this area is the only actively excavated Ice Age fossil site found in an urban location in the world!
Is tar made from plants?
Many countries around the world, Norway and Morocco to name a few, obtain tar from endemic trees. In a process of dry distillation, the organic material, endemic trees in this case, is exposed to a high temperature with a restricted amount of oxygen.
What is tar extracted from?
Tar can be extracted from coal, petroleum, wood, or peat.
What is bitumen made of?
Bitumen is a black viscous mixture of hydro carbons extracted naturally or as a residue from petroleum distillation. Of the three, tar is the most common and generic term, because tars can occur naturally or by distillation or chemical reaction. There is coal tar, tar pine tar (sap), and tobacco.
How long does it take for asphalt to dry?
Asphalt applied hot and allowed to dry in sunlight will solidify in roughly 12hours –36 hours. Before to solidifying, its surface is highly sticky and viscous.
What is tar in asphalt?
And a Tar is a thick, dark, flammable liquid distilled from coal, wood consisting of a mixture of hydrocarbons, resins, alcohols, and other compounds.
Why is wood tar used in Finnish medicine?
Wood tar is used in traditional Finnish medicine because of its microbicidal properties. Wood tar is also available diluted as tar water, which has numerous uses: As a spice for food, like meat. As a scent for saunas.
What is road tar?
Road tar is a black fluid substance and is a blend of liquid asphalt and water. It is used in the construction of roadways, also to seal small cracks, and usually appears on the lower parts of a vehicle or in the wheel well.
What is asphalt concrete?
Asphalt concrete, also called asphalt , blacktop, tarmac , bitumen macadam, or rolled asphalt, is a composite material usually used to carpet the roads, parking areas, airports, and the main areas of embankment dams.
What is tar sands oil and why is it so bad for the environment?
It is extremely heavy (like tar) and difficult to extract. Getting it from deep in the ground to the surface can use up massive amounts of water — enough to rival what a small city may use on a daily basis. Even more water and energy is needed to refine it into anything resembling what goes into your gas tank. The amount of climate-polluting greenhouse gases emitted per barrel of tar sands oil can be 30% higher (throughout its life cycle) than conventional oil.
What is the impact of the tar sands on climate change and the boreal forest?
The tar sands are a key culprit. Between 1990 and 2018, tar sands production increased by 456% . The industry’s carbon footprint is greater than New Zealand and Kenya combined.
How do the tar sands violate Indigenous rights, and how are communities fighting back?
Tar sands chemicals have further been linked to higher rates of cancer in Indigenous communities and dangerous air pollution.
What are the key projects that would expand the tar sands?
The stakes are high in the tar sands — for the communities and for the world. But instead of slamming on the brakes on expanding operations, Canadian governments are helping industry by stepping on the gas.
What is the tar sand that goes on forever?
Seen from the sky, the tar sands reach beyond the horizon and seem to go on forever, resembling a painful scar on the Earth of epic proportions. Nearby riverbeds are visible as water levels strain under industrial use. Chemical runoff pools collect in massive toxic lakes that stain the landscape. Lingering in the air above (and in ...
How many acres of boreal forest have been cleared since the turn of the millennium?
Nature advocates estimate that the industrial development and wildfires in the tar sands region have cleared or degraded nearly two million acres of boreal forest since the turn of the millennium. This puts vital habitat for birds, caribou and other animals at risk. It’s also a climate issue since the boreal forest is a vital carbon sink.
Where are the Alberta tar sands?
The tar sands are vast oil fields and mines in the Canadian province of Alberta. Seen from the sky, the tar sands reach beyond the horizon and seem to go on forever, resembling a painful scar on the Earth of epic proportions.
How does tar sand affect the environment?
On a lifetime basis, a gallon of gasoline made from tar sands produces about 15% more carbon dioxide emissions than one made from conventional oil. This important difference is attributable to the energy intensive extraction, upgrading, and refining process. Mining versus in situ tar sands extraction.
How to extract bitumen from tar sands?
Extracting bitumen from tar sands—and refining it into products like gasoline—is significantly costlier and more difficult than extracting and refining liquid oil. Common extraction methods include surface mining—where the extraction site is excavated—and “in-situ” mining, where steam is used to liquefy bitumen deep underground.
How much water is consumed by tar sands?
Tar sands also impact water supplies. For every gallon of gasoline produced by tar sands, about 5.9 gallons of freshwater are consumed during the extraction, upgrading, and refining process. That’s roughly three times as much as used for conventional oil.
What is the name of the oil sands?
Tar sands are an increasingly common—but expensive and dirty—source of oil. Tar sands (also known as oil sands) are a mixture of mostly sand, clay, water, and a thick, molasses-like substance called bitumen. Bitumen is made of hydrocarbons—the same molecules in liquid oil—and is used to produce gasoline and other petroleum products.
How is surface mining harmful to the environment?
When surface mining is used, the wastewater ends up in toxic storage ponds. These ponds can cover over 30 square miles—making them some of the largest man-made structures on the planet.
Where is wastewater stored in a mine?
When in-situ mining is used, wastewater is stored in the same well the bitumen is extracted from—risking contaminated groundwater if a leak occurs.
Is tar sands in situ or in situ?
Mining versus in situ tar sands extraction. Unfortunately, the carbon emissions associated with extracting tar sands could increase over time, as in-situ mining—which creates more emissions than surface mining—is used to extract bitumen located deeper and deeper in the earth. Tar sands also impact water supplies.
Vast Black Holes
The only way to fully appreciate the scope of the tar sands is to see the mines from the air. Flying across the region from the north, the twisting channels of the Peace-Athabasca Delta, one of the world’s largest inland deltas, dominate the landscape, snaking through forest and marshlands with not a road or power line in sight.
An Insatiable Appetite for Oil
White explorers and traders set their sights on the tar sands as soon as they arrived. In 1789, Sir Alexander Mackenzie reported seeing veins of “bituminous quality” exposed along the Athabasca River. Within a century, prospectors and geologists had identified “almost inexhaustible supplies” of petroleum in the area.
Mighty Chin
Cairhien is to its south east and Andor is to it's south west. The Borderlands are to the north and Arad Doman is to the far west. Every map I look at they show the borders of the countries. I would assume that Andor controls it all but there is a clear border on some of these maps that shows no Countries name.
Felicur
From the map I took it to be part of Andor, but I don't know if it's ever stated in the books.
Majsju
It is unclaimed land, as the nations borders has retreated with the inability to control all the land.
Razor
Actually it is stated in the books. the land Tar Valon sits on is called an island. ;D
RAND AL THOR
I doubt any ruler is going to ask the Amyrlin Seat where her borders are......
Asmo
Tar Valom doesn't occupy any land except itself. It is an independent city-state like Far Madding. The government - the White Tower - controls the island that is called Tar Valon, but nothing else. Supposedly, at least.
Luckers
No Tar Valon does control an area of farmland around the island itself--but yes, the Caralain Grass, the Black Hills, what used to be Harden are all unclaimed land. Caralain is completely uninhabited, the Black Hills and Harden both have independent villiages that owe alleigence to no nation.
