Recycling of ferronickel slag tailing in cementitious materials: Activation and performance

Lin Chi, Shuang Lu*, Zhenming Li, Chendong Huang, Hui Jiang, Bin Peng

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)
35 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

As an industrial by-product containing pozzolanic components, recycled ferronickel slag (FNS) has the potential to be supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) to reduce the massive carbon footprint of the cement industry, however, the main limitation of ferronickel slag as SCMs is the low hydration rate at an early age. In this study, the pozzolanic activity property results indicate that if the proportion is more than 10 %, FSN can hardly participate in the cement hydration reaction during the early stage, even the mechanical strength of FNS-mortar decreases obviously with the higher proportion of ferronickel slag. Therefore, mechanical grinding and steam curing at an early age are applied to promote the reaction activity of the recycled ferronickel slag tailing in this study. Compared with standard curing, the compressive strength of hardened FNS-cement paste with steam curing at 60 °C or 80 °C increased by 8.2 % or 33.8 %, and the connected porosity decreased by 18.9 % or 17.3 %. And MgO in the ferronickel slag exists as Mg2SiO4 in raw materials and enters the C-S-H gel with the formation of M-S-H gel during the secondary hydration stage. This study provides a theoretical basis for solid waste-based concrete and promotes the recycling, conservation, and resources of solid waste in building materials.

Original languageEnglish
Article number160706
Number of pages11
JournalScience of the Total Environment
Volume861
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2023

Bibliographical note

Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.

Keywords

  • Ferronickel slag
  • Grinding and heat curing
  • Hydration mechanism
  • SCMs

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