6/14/2018 Raw materials

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UNDERSTANDING
CEMENT
Interpreting Cement Science
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Cement manufacturing
- raw materials
If you happen to be a geologist, the raw materials
quarry is probably the most interesting part of a cement
works, maybe unless you view the clinkering process as
igneous rocks in the making.

The most common raw rock types used in cement

production are:
Recent Articles
Limestone (supplies the bulk of the lime)
Clay, marl or shale (supplies the bulk of the silica,
alumina and ferric oxide) ASR Video 1
Other supplementary materials such as sand, fly
ash/pulverised fuel ash (PFA), or ironstone to
achieve the desired bulk composition

Quarry management is an art; most quarries will

probably have "good material" from which cement can
easily be made. They may also have some material that
is not as good. This might be harder to grind, or be of
less convenient composition. An over-the-shoulder look at ASR
in concrete as seen using the
SEM.

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6/14/2018 Raw materials

Read More

Book Review -
Alkali-Aggregate
Reaction in
Concrete: A World
Review

Limestone blocks being taken away for crushing.

(Picture courtesy Castle Cement.)
The UC review of "Alkali-
If the 'good stuff' is all used up first, it may be more Aggregate Reaction in Concrete: A
difficult to make cement out of what is left. Careful World Review" edited by Iam Sims
and Alan Poole.
selection on a day-to-day basis is needed to make the
best use of all the materials available.
Read More

Raw materials are extracted from the quarry, then

crushed and ground as necessary to provide a fine
material for blending. Most of the material is usually
Experiment
ground finer than 90 microns - the fineness is often
Suggestion Form
Suggest an experiment with
expressed in terms of the percentage retained on a 90
cement for the Understanding
micron sieve. Cement blog

Once the the raw materials are ground fine enough, Read More
they are blended in the proportions required to produce
clinker of the desired composition.

The blended raw materials are stored in a silo before

being fed into the kiln. The silo stores several days'
supply of material to provide a buffer against any
glitches in the supply of raw material from the quarry.

Technically, a cement producer can have almost

complete control over clinker composition by blending
raw materials of different compositions to produce the
desired result. In practice, however, clinker composition
is largely determined by the compositions of the locally-

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6/14/2018 Raw materials

available raw materials which make up the bulk of the

raw meal.

Supplementary materials are used to adjust the

composition of the raw meal but cost and availability
are likely to determine the extent to which they are
used. Transport costs in particular become significant in
view of the large quantities of materials used in making
cement.

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Articles like this one can provide a lot of useful material.
However, reading an article or two is perhaps not the
best way to get a clear picture of a complex process like
cement production. To get a more complete and
integrated understanding of how cement is made, do
have a look at the Understanding Cement book or
ebook. This easy-to-read and concise book also contains
much more detail on concrete chemistry and
deleterious processes in concrete compared with the
website.

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information

Almost everyone interested in

cement is also concerned to at least
some degree with concrete strength.
This ebook describes ten cement-
related characteristics of concrete
that can potentially cause strengths
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