Influence of pozzolans on plant oil-sulfur polymer cements: More sustainable and chemically-resistant alternatives to Portland cement

Low cost and high durability have made Portland cement the most widely-used building material, but benefits are offset by environmental harm of cement pro-duction contributing 8-10% of total anthropogenic CO2 gas emissions. High sul-fur-content materials (HSMs) are an alternative that can perform the binding roles as cements with a smaller carbon footprint, and possibly superior chemical, physical, and mechanical properties. Inverse vulcanization of 90 wt% sulfur with 10 wt% canola oil or sunflower oil to yield CanS or SunS, respectively. Notably, these HSMs prepared at temperatures <= 180 degrees C compared to > 1200 degrees C hours for Portland cement CanS was combined with 5 wt% fly ash (FA), silica fume (SF), ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS), or metakaolin (MK) to give com-posites CanS-FA, CanS-SF, CanS-GGBFS, and CanS-MK, respectively. The analo-gous protocol with SunS likewise yielded SunS-FA, SunS-SF, SunS-GGBFS, and SunS-MK. Each of these HSMs exhibit high compressive mechanical strength, low water uptake values, and exceptional resistance to acid-induced corrosion. All of the composites also exhibit superior compressive strength retention after expo-sure to acidic solutions, conditions under which Portland cement undergoes disso-lution. The polymer cement-pozzolan composites reported herein may thus serve as greener alternatives to traditional Portland cement in some applications.