Process, mineralogy and cement quality
This month Arthur Harrisson looks at the relationship between temperature differences in the clinker manufacturing process, the composition of clinker produced and the quality of the final cement.
Figure 1: variation of iron oxide and alumina in alite with clinker exit temperatures
In a project to explore the influence of different temperature profiles on clinker characteristics, a range of commonly available measurements relating to the clinker manufacturing process were matched with analysis of the clinker minerals.
The clinker characteristics were derived from a study of 20 clinker samples for which the composition of each of the clinker phases – alite, belite, aluminate and ferrite – were obtained using scanning electron microscopy and energy-dispersive X-ray microanalysis.
