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The cement industry is a vital sector of any economy since infrastructural development forms one of the indicators used in measuring a country's development. Cement revolutionized the building industry because of its early setting and hardening time, and its early strength gain and durability were found to be far superior and better than such materials as lime-pozzolana, lime -sand and lime-soil mixtures/mixes. However, cement has the inherent problems which include high heat of hydration, high shrinkage, potential alkali - silica reaction. It is also easily attacked by sulphates and chlorides. These effects lead to cracks in cement and concrete products and thus deterioration of structures. More importantly, cement production contributes to more than 5% of CO2 emission globally. Current trends in cement production incorporate minor constituent (admixtures), such as fly ash, granulated blast furnace slag, silica, metakaolin, among others, in clinker in order to improve the technical properties and durability of cement to mitigate the effect of acidic waters on cement. Only three pozzolanic materials have been studied extensively in Ghana, namely bauxite waste, clay and steel slag.
About the author
Ing. Dr. Eugene Atiemo is a chemical engineer with a specialty in evaluation and development of binary and ternary cements, design and construction of production plants for pozzolana cement. He has published several Journal papers on cemenentitious materials. He is currently the Director of CSIR-Building and Road Research Institute, Ghana.
