Recycling of quarry dust for supplementary cementitious materials in low carbon cement

Abstract

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the potential of using quarry dust as supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) in alkali activated slag and Portland cement synthesis. The incorporation of quarry dust increased the early compressive strength of samples and led to a little detrimental impact on the compressive strength at 28 days curing. From the results of thermogravimetric (TG) and X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), there was nearly no change in the hydration phase assemble. Mercury intrusion porosimeter (MIP) indicated that the addition of quarry dust by 10–20% increased the porosity but decreased the average pore diameter after curing for 28 days. As a result, quarry dust shows great potential to be used as SCMs for low carbon cement preparation.