Portland cement is the single most important building material on the planet, and yet you probably don’t know what it is. Portland cement is a special type of cement that’s made from a combination of large sandstone rocks, crushed limestone, and clay. Clay is an important ingredient because it makes cement hard and strong.
It’s usually formed by adding water to heated limestone, clay, and sandstone in huge kilns called pugmillers. The pugmillers are so big they are higher than the tallest skyscraper in New York City. Once made, Portland cement goes through a process called calcination-a kind of baking at very high temperature that drives off water-and then it is ground into a powder, mixed with water (the cement slurries), and poured onto the construction site where it hardens almost instantly into solid rock-hard concrete that has many other useful properties: It can be used to make buildings, roads, bridges and sidewalks; it’s great for the foundation of tall buildings; when mixed with sand or gravel it forms concrete for driveways; and so on.
You probably don’t know about that last category because Portland cement only becomes important when mixed with sand or gravel to form concrete for floors, walls and foundations. But you might
Portland cement is a vital ingredient in so many of the world’s building materials, from cement blocks to concrete roads and buildings. Most of these items are exposed to a lot of wear and tear, and Portland cement has developed a reputation for being strong, durable and easy to work with.
But as well as being an important building material, Portland cement has another potential use: it can be made into plates that will capture radon gas, a by-product of the radioactive decay of uranium. The plates will then be shipped off to radioactivity monitoring stations which tests them periodically to determine whether they are releasing detectable levels of radiation.
This is just one example of how Portland cement can be used in more than one way.
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Although Portland cement is the most commonly used building material, it is not the only one. Portland cement was invented in 1898 by a man named Charles Fenerty, a chemical engineer at Corbin and Fenerty, a company that operated in Portland, Oregon. He noticed that Portland’s plentiful supply of limestone, combined with its high lime content and its particular characteristics (greater resistance to chemical attack than other types of limestone), made it ideal for use as a mortar.
He also noted that Portland cement is strong. And he knew how to get it to be strong: by adding a certain amount of clay or silica and by using heat to speed up the setting process. This knowledge was all he needed to create Portland cement. And his work changed everything.
In 1900 Corbin and Fenerty sold their first ton of Portland cement to J.H. Walsh for use in his San Francisco building project, the International Hotel. The International Hotel’s walls were covered with eight coats of Corbin and Fenerty’s new product, four coats of old-fashioned lime mortar on top of which were four coats of newer-style hydraulic cement. The construction had been completed in only five months—a record time for any such project at that time—and the hotel
Both original Portland cement and concrete are made from limestone that has been treated with calcium hydroxide (also known as slaked lime or quicklime). This process is called calcination. Calcination is a chemical reaction between limestone and the material of choice, in this case water.
For the cement industry, calcination is the most important step in producing Portland cement. The reason is that the calcium in limestone reacts with the hydroxyl ions in water to produce calcium hydroxide. Calcium hydroxide reacts with silica sand to form silica gel, which hardens into what we know as cement.
Portland cement comes from calcinated limestone and silica gel. You can use lime for making cement without having to go through calcination, but you need a lot more lime than you do for making cement from calcinated limestone and silica gel. That’s because lime reacts much more slowly than calcium hydroxide does with silica sand.
Portland Cement is a mixture of Portland and hydraulic cement. Portland cement is a type of hydraulic cement that combines gypsum (or gypsum substitute) with limestone and clay in a 4:1 ratio. The name comes from the city of Portland, Oregon where it was first produced in 1911. It has been used in construction since the 1850’s.
Portland cement is a mixture of sand, limestone, and clay. It’s used in construction because it’s strong, waterproof, and has a low water content. In the past, Portland cement was made from rock or coal but now it is mostly produced using natural gas and oil. Portland cement is the most widely used form of concrete in the world.