Critical research study of quantification methods of mineralogical phases in cementitious materials

Cement or clinker phase quantification is considered as an important task for the control of the cement quality and its manufacturing conditions. Indeed, precise clinker phase quantification allows the prediction of cement properties and the identification of possible anomalies during its production process. However, the complexity of cement and clinker mineralogy makes this step very difficult. In this work, a study was carried out to quantify the mineralogical phases of four Portland cements and two clinkers using two different methods: The first is the traditional Bogue method and the second is X-ray diffraction coupled with Rietveld refinement. The comparison method results showed that the Rietveld method is the most precise and powerful tool for cement and clinker phase quantification since it takes into account the minor phases such as gypsum, anhydrite, and hemihydrate and differentiates between the polymorphism varieties of cement phases (M 1 alite, M 3 alite, β belite, and γ belite). However, it was shown that Bogue calculation remains a primary estimation method of only the major clinker phases (C 3 S, C 2 S, C 3 A, and C 4 AF). Only for calcite amount must be better estimated by thermogravimetric technique or calcimetry method than Rietveld method, since there is an overlapping of the peaks of calcite and alite.