Oxyfuel Combustion Residues as Supplementary Cementitious Materials for the Production of Blended Portland Cements

Oxyfuel combustion represents one of the most interesting processes aimed at CO2 capture and storage to mitigate greenhouse effects ascribable to the process industry. In a different technical area, searching for new processes aimed at producing low-CO2 cements has comparable relevance, due to the huge generation of greenhouse gases related to cement production. This paper proposes an integration of these two aspects, with an approach new in the pertinent literature. The possibility of reusing ashes, issued by a pilot plant fluidized bed oxyfuel combustion process, as a source of material in the production of low-CO2 cements is investigated. Ashes were tested as substitutes for natural pozzolan in blended cements. They were mixed with an industrial Portland clinker and natural gypsum in order to evaluate their hydraulic behavior at different curing temperatures (20–40°C) and times (2–28 days). Pozzolanicity tests together with differential thermal–thermogravimetric and X-ray diffraction analyses were employed to explore the hydration behavior of oxyfuel ashes-based blended cements.