Short-Term Performance of Sustainable Silica Fume Mortars Exposed to Sulfate Attack

José Marcos Ortega, María Dolores Esteban, Mark Williams, Isidro Sánchez and Miguel Ángel Climent
Additional contact information
José Marcos Ortega: Departamento de Ingeniería Civil, Universidad de Alicante, Ap. Correos 99, 03080 Alicante, Spain
María Dolores Esteban: Departamento de Ingeniería Civil, Urbanismo y Aeroespacial, Escuela de Arquitectura, Ingeniería y Diseño, Universidad Europea, c/Tajo s/n, Villaviciosa de Odón, 28670 Madrid, Spain
Mark Williams: Engineeria, 7 Ridgmount Street, London WC1E 7AE, UK
Isidro Sánchez: Departamento de Ingeniería Civil, Universidad de Alicante, Ap. Correos 99, 03080 Alicante, Spain
Miguel Ángel Climent: Departamento de Ingeniería Civil, Universidad de Alicante, Ap. Correos 99, 03080 Alicante, Spain

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 7, 1-14

Abstract: Nowadays, the reuse of wastes is essential in order to reach a more sustainable environment. The cement production results in CO 2 emissions which significantly contribute to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. One way to reduce them is by partially replacing clinker by additions, such as silica fumes or other wastes. On the other hand, the pore structure of cementitious materials has a direct influence on their service properties. One of the most popular techniques for characterizing the microstructure of those materials is mercury intrusion porosimetry. In this work, this technique has been used for studying the evolution of the pore network of mortars with different percentages of silica fume (until 10%), which were exposed to aggressive sodium and magnesium sulfate solutions up to 90 days. Between the results of this technique, intrusion-extrusion curves and logarithms of differential intrusion volume versus pore size curves were studied. This characterization of the pore network of mortars has been complemented with the study of their compressive strength and their steady-state ionic diffusion coefficient obtained from samples’ resistivity. Generally, silica fume mortars showed different performance depending on the aggressive condition, although the greatest deleterious effects were observed in the medium with presence of both magnesium and sodium sulfates.

Keywords: silica fume; sodium sulfate; magnesium sulfate; sustainability; mercury intrusion porosimetry; pore structure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/7/2517/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/7/2517/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:10:y:2018:i:7:p:2517-:d:158635

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().