One alternative to decrease CO2 emissions from ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) production consists
on the development of a new kind of eco-cements composed by less calcite demanding phases. That is
the case of Belite-Ye’elimite-Ferrite (BYF) cements, which have β-belite as a main phase and ye’elimite
as a secondary phase. But the low reactivity of β-belite is well known, consequently these materials
develop low mechanical strengths at early/intermediate hydration ages. A possible solution proposed to
solve this problem consists on the production of cements which contain belite, alite and ye'elimite
together, known as Belite-Alite-Ye’elimite (BAY) cements. Consequently, the reaction of alite and
ye'elimite with water would develop cements with higher mechanical strengths at early ages, while β-
belite will contribute to later ages.
The main objective of this work is to better understand the hydration behavior of monoclinic alite in
presence of ye’elimite (both stoichiometric and pseudo-cubic polymorphs), in order to be compared with
a BAY eco-cement systems. The hydration of systems with selected alite/ye’elimite ratios were studied
for the first 24 hours. The main techniques used for this study were in-situ synchrotron X-ray powder
diffraction combined with Rietveld methodology and isothermal calorimetry.