More on Celitement

At a first glance, Celitements are rather strange hydraulic binders. They already contain water, which is chemically bound within these novel hydraulically active calcium hydrosilicates. Key is the amount of water and the type of incorporation.

Conventional cements are free of water - after the addition of water hydration reaction starts and solidification takes place. Celitements plus water, sand and aggregate can be processed to concrete like Ordinary Portland Cements (OPC).

Celitements show the handling and quality of known cementitious binders as well as a good energy efficiency and decreased carbon dioxid emission due to manufacturing. In a basic approach, lime and sand are used as starting materials - a lime modulus in the range of 0,5 to 2 is sufficient. As most of the carbon dioxids originates from limestone, this reduces emissions up to 50% compared to OPC.  

Production of Celitement is achieved at temperatures below 300°C. Compared to OPC clinker (rotary kiln, 1.450°C), low process temperature and reduced limestone content economise substantially on energy.

Celitements are compatible to OPC and reveal excellent properties. Phase composition is very homogeneous; i.e. regulation of properties is straightforward and simple, e.g. strength as a funciton of time.

The basic principles of Celitement materials and the production process are an invention of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology KIT.

The company Celitement GmbH was founded in 2009 by Schwenk Group, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology KIT and scientists of KIT. The aim is to get Celitement to market.