Abstract
Tricalcium silicate phase is one of the main components of modern Portland cements. One of the major industrial challenges in the field of cement production is mapping the influence of individual clinker minerals and their polymorphs on the properties of industrially produced clinkers. The primary goal of this work is to improve the fundamental knowledge of understanding the process of alite formation and development from a crystallographic point of view. This study focuses on the observation of the crystallization process of triclinic alite during the firing process, which to date has not been thoroughly described. The effects of a wide range of temperatures and sintering periods on crystallinity were assessed on samples fired in platinum crucibles in a laboratory furnace. X-ray analysis—together with calculation of crystallinity using Scherrer’s equation—was used for observing the crystallite size changes of T1 alite polymorph. According to the acquired results, among the most technologically and economically advantageous regimes of production of a high-quality triclinic alite is the temperature of 1450 °C and sintering time of two hours. The most significant changes in the crystallite size occurred within the first hour of sintering for the whole investigated temperature range.
Highlights
The modern trends in industry and commerce are towards environmental sustainability and economic savings
This study presents fundamental research of the basic processes occurring during the processes of formation and development of triclinic alite from a microscopic point of view
52 nm andresults, the growth rate is around the value of 1.03 nm/min
Summary
The modern trends in industry and commerce are towards environmental sustainability and economic savings This approach has led to the development of numerous enhancements throughout various industrial branches—from medicine and bioengineering [1], metallurgy and materials engineering [2], recycling and recovery [3], thermal engineering [4], to civil engineering and cement industry [5]. Methods for reducing emissions are being continuously developed in the cement industry, since the production process of Portland cement produces significant amount of CO2 , which is released during both, the thermal decomposition of limestone carbonates and fuel combustion By this reason, refined fuels are being gradually substituted by alternative fuels, which introduces economic and environmental benefits, but brings about many technological issues, too. These issues originate from increasing the contents of certain elements; the effects of the changes on the properties of the produced clinkers are subject to continuous investigations and monitoring [6,7,8,9,10,11]
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