The production and processing of ordinary Portland cement are responsible for nearly 5% of the world C02 emissions. Due to the world’s increasing requirement for building materials, this air pollution is growing up in the next decades. Alternative cement such as geopolymers can reduce these emissions effectively, Conventional geopolymer binders, produced ffom fly ash or metakaolin as aluminosilicate source and water-glass or alkali hydroxide Solutions as activator, are often used and studied. It is known that under appropriate conditions the starting materials form a three-dimensional aluminosilicate structure and create a gel-like matrix, In our case, a silica source from wastewater treatment of chlorosilane production and solid sodium aluminate as starting materials are initiated to harden by water. This procedure is known as “just add water” or “one-part” geopolymer formulation. These composites have significant advantages for use on construction site, but their Chemical structure is not extensively analyzed. In this work, a well known one-part geopolymer is investigated by 'H and 27A1 magic-angle spinning nuclear magnetic resonance (MAS NMR) spectroscopy. Furthermore, it is shown that overlapping NMR lines can resolved with echo experiments and
One-part-geopolymers, produced by addition of water to a mixture of solid silica and sodium alumi-nate, are a less exhaustively studied approach to form geopolymeric binders. Depending on the silica source, the reaction products show significant amounts of zeolite Na-A besides amorphous compounds. Previously, 29Si MAS NMR has been used to analyze the chemical structure of such one-part geopolymers, having crystalline structures and amorphous phases (Q2, Q3, Q4).
In this work, pure zeolites and three different one-part-geopolymers cured for 1 day were investigated by 29Si-27Al TRAPDOR NMR. It was used to identify aluminum phases in overlapping silicon sites. Zeolites Na-X (Si/Al=1.4) and Na-Y (Si/Al=2.7) served as model systems to measure the TRAPDOR effect of the structural units Q4(mAl). Both materials show several Q4(mAl) signals, which are all separated by their chemical shifts. The more aluminum surrounds the silicon tetrahedron the higher are the normalized TRAPDOR difference signals (S0/∆S). The intensity ratios between Q4(mAl) to Q4({m-1}Al) of these signals is fixed but vary slightly between both zeolites. These results are transferred to the complex geopolymer structure.
A silica residue from waste treatment of chlorosilane production was used together with solid sodium aluminate to test its applicability for the production of one-part geopolymers. The blend was activated with water and cured at 70 °C. The degree of reaction and strength were determined after 1, 3, and 7 days. The reaction products were analyzed by XRD and SEM/EDX. Until the third day of curing the degree of reaction of the residue reached 51 % and the strength was 8.9 MPa. The reaction product was identified as geopolymer containing zeolite A. Thus, the results confirmed that the residue may be used in the production of geopolymers. However, after 3 days of curing no further progress of reaction was observed and the strength slightly decreased, which was attributed to changes in the structure of the geopolymeric gel. It was further observed that even harsh vacuum drying left some water (presumably zeolitic water and surface hydroxyl groups) in the geopolymer.
One-part geopolymers offer advantages over conventional geopolymers with regard to handling and storage of feedstocks. However, they often suffer from a low degree of reaction, a high amount of crystalline byproducts, and consequently low strength. In this study, one-part geopolymers were produced from rice husk ash (RHA) and sodium aluminate, and investigated by XRD, ATR-FTIR, SEM and compressive strength testing. The compressive strength of the material was 30 MPa, i.e. significantly higher than for comparable one-part geopolymers. This is attributed to an almost complete reaction of the RHA and the absence of crystalline byproducts (zeolites) in the hardened geopolymer.