Material and environmental parameter effects on the leaching of cement pastes: Experiments and modelling

Results already published on the leaching of cement pastes have shown that the kinetics depends sensitively on the material and environment. However and because of the variability of the tested materials and leaching protocols, it is difficult to compare these data and quantify the effect of each parameter. In this paper, a large experimental database on the leaching kinetics of cement pastes is built. Four parameters are investigated: type of cement (portland cement, silica fume cement, slag cement, ternary cement with slag and fly ash); water-to-cement ratio (0.5; 0.4; 0.25), temperature (26 °C; 72 °C; 85 °C) and chemical composition of the leaching solution (pure water, mineralised water, ammonium nitrate solution). Firstly, the database is used to calculate the leaching kinetics of the cementitious materials. Secondly, a simplified model predicting the one-dimensional leaching kinetics for other water-to-cement ratios and temperature up to 85 °C is presented.