K. DVOØÁK et al.: EVALUATION OF THE GRINDABILITY OF RECYCLED GLASS ...
729–734
EVALUATION OF THE GRINDABILITY OF RECYCLED GLASS IN
THE PRODUCTION OF BLENDED CEMENTS
OCENA SPOSOBNOSTI DROBLJENJA RECIKLIRANEGA STEKLA
PRI PROIZVODNJI ME[ANIH CEMENTOV
Karel Dvoøák1, Du{an Dolák1, Dalibor V{ianský2, Petr Dobrovolný1
1Brno University of Technology, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Veveøí 331/95, 602 00 Brno, Czech Republic
2Masaryk University, Faculty of Science, Kotláøská 267/2, 611 37 Brno, Czech Republic
dolak.d@fce.vutbr.cz
Prejem rokopisa – received: 2015-07-01; sprejem za objavo – accepted for publication: 2015-09-14
doi:10.17222/mit.2015.184
The replacement of primary raw materials in cement production is a current topic. Potentially usable raw materials include recy-
cled glass. The disadvantage of glass is its tendency to aggregate. The conventional method for the production of blended ce-
ment is separate grinding and then homogenizing the components. However, in this case aggregated fine glass in the cement
composites acts only physically and mechanically as a filler rather than as an active pozzolan. An interesting option to prevent
the formation of aggregates formed from glass is co-grinding. This procedure is not very common in practice. Various ingredi-
ents of blended cements have widely different grindabilities, and it is therefore better to grind them separately. The aim is to
compare the co-grinding and separate grinding of a combination of Portland clinker and recycled glass. The grindability was
tested on clinker, glass, and blended cements prepared by co-grinding and by separate grinding. The results of the experiment
show that by co-grinding the components of blended cement with the addition of 20 % of recycled glass as a pozzolan, a syn-
ergy effect caused by the various mechanical properties of the components occurs. The aggregation of grains is less significant
than during separate grinding and it leads to a better grinding effect. This knowledge can by utilized in the design and process-
ing of new blended cements. Also, co-milling the glass-cement system can eliminate the stage of homogenization, and, therefore
save energy.
Keywords: grindability, Portland clinker, recycled glass
Tema ~lanka je nadome{~anje primarnih surovin pri proizvodnji cementa. Potencialno uporabno surovino predstavlja reciklirano
steklo. Pomanjkljivost stekla je, da ima nagnjenost k sprijemanju. Obi~ajna metoda proizvodnje me{anega cementa je lo~eno
drobljenje in homogenizacija sestavin. V tem primeru drobnozrnato steklo v cementnih me{anicah deluje samo fizikalno in
mehansko kot polnilo in ne kot aktiven pozolan. Dodatno mletje je pomembno za prepre~evanje nastanka skupkov stekla.
Vendar pa ta postopek ni tako pogost v praksi. Razli~ne sestavine cementne me{anice se razli~no drobijo in je zato bolje, da se
jih drobi lo~eno. Namen {tudije je primerjati dodatno mletje in lo~eno mletje kombinacije Portland klinkerja in recikliranega
stekla. Mletje je bilo preizku{eno na klinkerju, steklu in me{anici cementov, pripravljenih z dodatnim mletjem in z lo~enim
mletjem. Rezultati preizkusov so pokazali, da se pri isto~asnem mletju me{anic cementov z dodatkom 20 % recikliranega stekla
kot pozolana, pojavi sinergijski pojav zaradi razli~nih mehanskih lastnosti sestavin. Zdru`evanje zrn je manj izrazito kot pa pri
lo~enem mletju in povzro~i bolj{i u~inek mletja. To dejstvo je mogo~e uporabiti pri na~rtovanju in izdelavi novih me{anic
cementov. Torej se lahko z isto~asnim mletjem sistema steklo-cement, odpravi fazo homogenizacije in s tem prihrani energijo.
Klju~ne besede: sposobnost mletja, portlandski klinker, reciklirano steklo
1 INTRODUCTION
Secondary raw materials represent an ever more fre-
quent replacement for primary raw materials in the pro-
duction of building materials. The area of cement pro-
duction is no exception. In current practice, blended
cements are applied increasingly more often. In these ce-
ments, the Portland clinker is replaced by hydraulically
active compounds or agents with pozzolanic proper-
ties.1–3 Glass is chemically and mineralogically very
close to traditional pozzolans. Therefore, various types
of recycled glass may be potentially interesting raw ma-
terials for the production of blended cements. Various
authors have described the behavior of finely ground
glass in cement composites.4,5 However, due to a consid-
erable ability to agglomerate, the recycled glass used as
an additive for the cement composite is not reactive
enough and acts only physically-mechanically as a filler.4
The common production process for blended cements is
separate grinding of the individual components and their
subsequent homogenization. This procedure is common
in the production of blast-furnace slag cements. In this
case the procedure is advantageous because Portland ce-
ment clinker and blast-furnace slag have very different
grindabilities and it is therefore preferable to grind them
separately, and subsequently to homogenize.6 As noted
above, fine glass powder exhibits a significant ability for
aggregation, which greatly complicates the homogeniza-
tion with Portland cement. Therefore, the traditional ap-
proach of separate grinding and subsequent homogeniza-
tion seems to be less suitable in the case of a
glass-cement system. An interesting option to prevent
the formation of agglomerates with pure glass is
co-grinding of the glass and clinker. The content of SiO2
in recycled glass is only in amorphous form and the
hardness is 7 on the Mohs scale. The standard alite
Materiali in tehnologije / Materials and technology 50 (2016) 5, 729–734 729
UDK 620.1:621.926:621.315.612:621.742.48 ISSN 1580-2949
Original scientific article/Izvirni znanstveni ~lanek MTAEC9, 50(5)729(2016)
clinker contains four main minerals, and their weighted
average hardness is between 6 and 7 on the Mohs scale.7
However, the recycled glass is much more fragile, which
means the grindability of both components could be very
similar. Various authors have chosen different methods to
assess grindability. Most methods are based on an evalu-
ation of the ratio of the energy consumption and refine-
ment of the material.8–12 An interesting approach is to
evaluate the grindability by using particle size distribu-
tion curves.6 The aim was to assess whether in the case
of a cement-glass system, co-grinding of the component
is more advantageous than separate grinding with subse-
quent homogenization. The selected approach was to
monitor and compare the grindability of the individual
components as well as the mix. The method of monitor-
ing the impact of the constant grinding time on the parti-
cle size distribution curves and specific surface area was
chosen for the experiment.
2 MATERIALS AND METHODS
For monitoring the grindability, recycled glass and
Portland cement were used. The chemical composition
of the recycled glass was determined by traditional
chemical analysis. The modified Chapelle test method13
was used for the pozzolanic activity determination. The
modified Chapelle test consists of the reaction of
pozzolan and freshly annealed CaO in an aquatic envi-
ronment at 93 °C for 24 h. The reaction takes place in a
tightly sealed stainless-steel vessel and the suspension is
stirred by an electromagnetic stirrer. The result is
expressed as the amount of Ca(OH)2 bound in mg per 1 g
of pozzolan. The density of the recycled glass was deter-
mined by automatic pycnometer Micromeritics AccuPyc
II 1340. For the measurement of the specific surface
according to Blaine, an automatic PC-Blaine-Star device
was used to measure the cell capacity of 7.95 cm3. The
determination was performed three times to eliminate
errors. The morphology of the particles was determined
by scanning electron microscope (SEM). A Tescan
MIRA 3 XMU SEM with a secondary-electron detector
was used. The Portland cement was prepared in a labo-
ratory ball mill by co-grinding of the Portland clinker
from cement plant Hranice and the chemo-gypsum
Pregips in the ratio 95/5. Milling was carried out to the
same specific surface area that was measured on the
recycled glass. The chemical composition, the density,
the specific surface area, and morphology of the particles
were also determined. The blended cement was prepared
by co-milling Portland clinker, gypsum and recycled
glass in the ratio 76/4/20. Milling was carried out to the
same specific surface area that was measured on the
recycled glass. As in the previous case, chemical compo-
sition, density, specific surface area and morphology of
the particles were also determined. The milling in this
phase of the experiment was always carried out at a total
dose of 5 kg in a Brio OM 20 ball mill at a speed of
40 min–1. The grinding of the recycled glass, the Portland
cement and the blended cement for determining the
grindability was performed in a Fritsch Pulverisette 6
planetary mill at 500 min–1. A steel vessel of 500 mL and
25 steel grinding balls of 20 mm diameter and a mass of
180 g of material were always used. The grinding times
were (1, 2, 3 and 5) min. Then, the particle size
distribution was performed on each of these samples
using a Matest Air jet sieve. The sieves mesh size were
(0.010, 0.020, 0.041, 0.063, 0.090 and 0.125) mm. The
Blaine specific surface area and morphology of the
particles by SEM were determined on all the samples
ground for 5 min. A simple calculation using weighted-
average values of the surface areas separately milled
components was made to facilitate the grindability com-
parison, Equation (1):
SBC = 0.8 · SPC + 0.2 · SGR (1)
Where SBC is the theoretical specific surface area of
the blended cement, SPC is the specific surface area of the
Portland cement and SRG is the specific surface area of
the recycled glass. Subsequently, a sample of the blended
cement was prepared by homogenization of the sepa-
rately ground components in the same proportions. Ho-
mogenization of the sample was performed using a labo-
ratory homogenizer for 1 h. On the resulting samples the
specific surface area according to Blaine was deter-
mined. The results were compared with the calculation.
3 RESULTS
Chemical compositions of the clinker and gypsum
are summarized in Tables 1 and 2.
Table 1: Partial chemical composition of clinker
Tabela 1: Parcialna kemijska sestava klinkerja
Component SiO2 CaO Al2O3 Fe2O3 SO3 Others
Content (%) 20.29 65.33 5.21 5.04 0.79 3.34
Table 2: Partial chemical composition of gypsum
Tabela 2: Parcialna kemijska sestava mavca
Component CaSO4·2H2O H2O CaSO4 Others
Content (%) 84.00 11.00 2.40 2.60
The chemical composition of the selected clinker is
typical for Portland clinkers. In the case of gypsum, it is
highly pure with a relatively high humidity; therefore, it
should be dried for the cement preparation to reduce the
humidity to under 5 % according to ^SN 721206.
Chemical composition of the recycled glass is sum-
marized in Table 3 and its pozzolanic activity is indi-
cated in Table 4.
Table 3: Partial chemical composition of the recycled glass
Tabela 3: Parcialna kemijska sestava recikliranega stekla
Component SiO2 CaO Al2O3 K2O Na2O Others
Content (%) 69.25 8.09 0.83 0.41 16.44 4.98
K. DVOØÁK et al.: EVALUATION OF THE GRINDABILITY OF RECYCLED GLASS ...
730 Materiali in tehnologije / Materials and technology 50 (2016) 5, 729–734
Table 4: Pozzolanic activity of recycled glass with different specific
surface area
Tabela 4: Pozolanska aktivnost recikliranega stekla z razli~no
specifi~no povr{ino
Specific surface area (m2 kg–1) 244
Pozzolanic activity (mg Ca(OH)2/g pozzolan) 1112
The chemical and mineralogical compositions of the
recycled glass resemble a classic pozzolan. The sample
of recycled glass with a specific surface area of 244 m2
kg–1 reached a pozzolanic activity of 1112 mg Ca(OH)2/1
g in a modified Chapelle test.
An overview of the properties of the raw materials on
the grindability are included in Table 5. All the
pre-grinding was made on a ball mill to ensure roughly
the same surface area as the recycled glass.
Table 5: Overview of input materials
Tabela 5: Pregled vhodnih materialov
Material Compo-nents (%)
Pre-
ground
Density
(kg/m3)
Specific
surface
area
(m2 kg–1)
Portland
cement
Clinker 95
Yes 3081 250
Gypsum 5
Glass Glass 100 No 2458 244
Blended
cement
Clinker 76
Yes 2952 247Gypsum 4
Glass 20
All the input materials were then ground in a
planetary mill for (1, 2, 3 and 5) min with a rotational
speed of 500 min–1. Each sample was then examined
with a sieve analysis. The results are summarized in Fig-
ures 1 to 5.
From the size distribution curves of the input materi-
als it is evident that although the specific surface area is
similar, the recycled glass is much coarser. This is
caused by the different shapes of the grains in the recy-
K. DVOØÁK et al.: EVALUATION OF THE GRINDABILITY OF RECYCLED GLASS ...
Materiali in tehnologije / Materials and technology 50 (2016) 5, 729–734 731
Figure 4: Size distribution after 3 min
Slika 4: Razporeditev velikosti po 3 min
Figure 1: Size distribution of input materials
Slika 1: Razporeditev velikosti vhodnih materialov
Figure 2: Size distribution after 1 min
Slika 2: Razporeditev velikosti po1 min
Figure 3: Size distribution after 2 min
Slika 3: Razporeditev velikosti po 2 min
cled glass, Portland cement and blended cement, as seen
in Figures 6 to 8. The curves of the particle size distribu-
tion of the grinded materials indicate that the grindability
of the recycled glass and the Portland cement is similar
for selected time intervals. However, by co-grinding
these materials, the grinding effect was stronger.
The images taken by scanning electron microscopy
before and after the grinding of the components are
K. DVOØÁK et al.: EVALUATION OF THE GRINDABILITY OF RECYCLED GLASS ...
732 Materiali in tehnologije / Materials and technology 50 (2016) 5, 729–734
Figure 8: SEM image of RG: a) before and b) after grinding
Slika 8: SEM-posnetek RG: a) pred in b) po mletju
Figure 6: SEM image of BC: a) before and b) after grinding
Slika 6: SEM-posnetek BC: a) pred in b) po mletju
Figure 5: Size distribution after 5 min
Slika 5: Razporeditev velikosti po 5 min
Figure 7: SEM image of PC: a) before and b) after grinding
Slika 7: SEM-posnetek PC: a) pred in b) po mletju
shown in Figures 6 to 8. BC is an abbreviation for
blended cement, PC for Portland cement and RG for re-
cycled glass.
The Blaine specific surface area was determined on
all the samples ground for 5 min. The results of the mea-
surement and the calculated specific surface area are
summarized in Table 6.
SBC = 0.8 · SPC + 0.2 · SGR
SBC = 0.8 · 500 + 0.2 ·517 = 503.4
Table 6: Change of specific surface area before and after 5 min of
grinding
Tabela 6: Sprememba specifi~ne povr{ine, pred in po 5 min mletju
Component Cement Glass
Blended
c (to-
gether)
Blended
c (sepa-
rate)
Blended
c (calcu-
lation)
Specific sur-
face area be-
fore g (m2/kg)
250 244 247 – –
Specific sur-
face area after
g (m2/kg)
500 517 532 504 503.4
Specific surface area of separate grinded blended ce-
ment corresponds with the calculation. In the case of
co-grinded blended cement the specific surface area is
considerably higher.
4 DISCUSSION
The chemical and mineralogical compositions of the
recycled glass resemble a classic pozzolan. The sample of
recycled glass with a specific surface area of 244 m2 kg–1
reached a pozzolanic activity of 1112 mg Ca(OH)2/1 g in
a modified Chapelle test. The pozzolan activity of the
chosen recycled material can be rated as high, because
classic pozzolans such as fly ash reach values of 700 mg
to 850 mg.14 Therefore, it can be stated that this is a pro-
mising pozzolanic material. The chemical composition
of the selected clinker is typical for Portland clinkers
with a large amount of tricalcium silicate.7 In the case of
gypsum, it is a highly pure by-product gypsum from the
production of titanium dioxide.
The grain morphology of the Portland cement and
glass, which were adjusted to the same initial surface
area and were used as the input for the grindability tests,
are significantly different. Unlike Portland cement, recy-
cled glass consists of grains with a substantially sharp-
edged morphology. This grain shape can be explained by
the high fragility and amorphous structure of the glass.15
From the measured values of the balances of the raw ma-
terials on the sieves, the statement can be made that with
a low surface area and larger grain size, Portland cement
is milled the best. Glass is indeed fragile, but has a
higher tendency to aggregate the particles.15,16 This phe-
nomenon can affect the outcome of the determination of
the particle size distribution during the early stages of
grinding. As shown in Figures 2 to 5, with increasing
surface area, blended cement is ground more intensively
than recycled glass or Portland cement. Increased effi-
ciency co-milling is caused by the different mechanical
properties of the clinker and the glass.7,15 When recycled
glass is milled separately, it preserves the delicate char-
acter and this leads to its rapid disintegration. Neverthe-
less, the distinctive ability of aggregation and agglomera-
tion negatively affects the final particle size distribution,
as evidenced in Figure 8. In the case of clinker, the abil-
ity to aggregate and agglomerate is lower.17 Because of
the chemical and mineralogical compositions of the
grains they are more able to compensate for the impacts
of the grinding elements. This affects the particle size
distribution. The co-milling of cement and recycled glass
leads to a better milling effect, since the above-described
phenomena are compensated, plus the clinker grains are
functioning as an additional grinding medium. This is re-
flected not only in the resulting particle size distribution
obtained on specific surfaces, but also in a better homo-
geneity of mixed cement. The synergistic effect of
co-milling in the case of cement glass was proved by the
simple calculation model of weighted averages for the
results of the separately ground materials’ surface areas.
The result of the calculation, 503.4 m2 kg–1, correlated
well with the experimentally measured value of the spe-
cific surface area of the blended cement composed of
separately milled components, i.e., 504 m2 kg–1. By joint
grinding of the blended cement in same grinding condi-
tions, a much larger specific surface area has been
achieved, i.e., 532 m2 kg–1.
5 CONCLUSION
The pozzolanic activity of the fine recycled glass is
relatively high. It reaches higher levels of pozzolanic ac-
tivity than traditional ash, and on a significantly lower
surface area. The distribution of particles of recycled
glass and Portland cement measured by sieve analysis
with separate grinding is similar. The synergistic effect
of co-milling was demonstrated in comparison with a
blended cement prepared by the homogenization of sepa-
rately ground materials. This phenomenon is caused by
the fact that the negatives associated with separate grind-
ing of the individual materials are suppressed. Another
advantage of co-milling the glass-cement system is en-
ergy saving, by eliminating the stage of homogenization.
Based on the results obtained, recycled glass appears as a
potentially useful pozzolan for the preparation of
blended cements by co-milling with cement.
Acknowledgment
This work was financially supported by project num-
ber: 15-08755S "Study of effects of samples preparation
on inorganic binders final properties" and project No.
LO1408 "AdMaS UP – Advanced Materials, Structures
and Technologies", supported by Ministry of Education,
K. DVOØÁK et al.: EVALUATION OF THE GRINDABILITY OF RECYCLED GLASS ...
Materiali in tehnologije / Materials and technology 50 (2016) 5, 729–734 733
Youth and Sports under the National Sustainability
Programme I.
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734 Materiali in tehnologije / Materials and technology 50 (2016) 5, 729–734