Research Projects

The motivation behind the proposed project is to reduce the cement industry's carbon footprint and support India’s goal of achieving net zero emission targets by 2070. The study's key objective is to investigate the feasibility of mechanochemical activation as an alternative activation route to conventional calcination for producing supplementary cementitious materials for partial cement replacement. The conventionally used SCMs are aluminosilicates like clays which can be activated using calcination. However, several aluminosilicates, such as feldspars, basalt and granite, cannot be transformed into reactive material by calcination. Mechanochemical activation involves high-intensity planetary ball milling, which could convert the crystalline aluminosilicate minerals into reactive amorphous phases by introducing structural disorder in their crystal structure. Therefore, the main hypothesis to be investigated is the feasibility of milling non-conventional aluminosilicate minerals, such as feldspars, basalt and granite, for applications in cementitious systems. Additionally, basalt and granite contain calcium and magnesium, which can be used to mineralise carbon dioxide as calcium and magnesium carbonates. Several open questions need to be addressed before scaling up the mechanochemical activation from laboratory to pilot industrial-scale production for commercialisation. Several operating parameters will be investigated, such as powder load, balls-to-powder ratio, and milling RPM and their impact on the degree of amorphisation in aluminosilicate minerals. The effect of the operating parameters and mineralogy on the CO2 mineralisation potential will also be investigated. Pre and post-milling characterisation of aluminosilicate minerals will be done using X-ray fluorescence, BET physical absorption, Quantitative and qualitative X-ray diffraction, particle size analysis and thermogravimetric analysis. The performance of the mechanochemically activated clays in cementitious systems will be investigated using isothermal calorimetry and compressive strength development. A comparative energy analysis will also be conducted to understand the efficiency of the mechanochemically activated aluminosilicates compared to conventional calcination. The results can significantly improve our understanding of the mechanochemical activation process and open up the possibility of using currently underused aluminosilicate minerals to substantially reduce the carbon dioxide emissions from the cement sector through partial clinker replacement.