Cold Water Extraction for determination of the free alkali metal content in blended cement pastes

In this work, Cold Water Extraction (CWE) was performed on blended cement pastes to extract the pore solution and determine the free alkali metal content. To better understand CWE results, the reactivity of cementitious materials was also investigated, complemented by TGA and quantitative XRD analysis. The study aimed at being generic to assess the suitability of the methods, and included 9 SCMs with various compositions: limestone, coal fly ash, two calcined clays, two biomass ashes, sewage sludge ash, crushed brick and glass beads.The study highlighted the importance of assessing the reactivity of SCMs in parallel to performing CWE, as this contributes to a more certain interpretation of the results. In general, results obtained with CWE were consistent with the existing literature about the effect of binder composition on the free alkali metal content. From a practical view, CWE and SCM reactivity tests could be performed with basic laboratory equipment and appeared to be applicable to both traditional and alternative SCMs.