Synthesis and performance of aluminous cements containing zirconium and strontium as alternatives to the calcium aluminate cements designed for the production of high performance refractories

Abstract

Composite cements belonging to the CaO–Al2O3–ZrO2 (C-A-Z) and CaO–SrO–Al2O3–ZrO2 (C–Sr-A-Z) systems were evaluated as alternatives to calcium aluminate cements (CACs) for use in the refractory castables technology. The mineralogical phases in the as-synthesized C-A-Z and C–Sr-A-Z clinkers confirmed by XRD and SEM-EDS were CaAl2O4, Ca7ZrAl6O18 and CaZrO3 or (Ca,Sr)Al2O4, (Ca,Sr)Al4O7 and (Ca,Sr)ZrO3, respectively. The present work aimed at developing novel Zr-containing cements with excellent mechanical performance, i.e. modulus of rupture and cold crushing strength. Both hydration behavior of the C-A-Z, C–Sr-A-Z, CAC and their hydration products, were studied with isothermal calorimetry, XRD, SEM-EDS and NMR. Impedance camera instrument was firstly successfully applied for time-resolved electrochemical impedance spectroscopy measurements under nonstationary conditions and record the time-dependent evolution of the Nyquist plots for hydrating cement pastes. A sharp increase in the real part of impedance Z’ versus hydration time were corresponded to the second exothermic peak detected on the calorimetry curves.