Student Sponsorship
The Geopolymer Alliance is sponsoring two Ph D students at
Melbourne University.
Both work in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular
Engineering at the University of Melbourne and are supervised
by Dr John Provis (jprovis@unimelb.edu.au ).
Ailar Hajimohammadi’s project is:-
Utilizing one-part mixes for analyzing and manipulating
the structure of geopolymers
In geopolymer technology, silicate solutions are frequently used
in alkali activation for dissolving the aluminosilicate to produce
the binder. These corrosive and often viscous solutions are not
user friendly, and would be difficult to use for bulk production.
Developing geopolymers as a one-part mixture “just add
water” similar to OPC increases their commercial viability.
On the other hand, purity of such systems and slow reaction process
in one-part geopolymer mixes makes it easier to observe early-stage
development, which makes them highly suitable for fundamental
studies. The aim of this project is to utilize simple and pure one
part geopolymer mixes for better understanding of the chemical
processes governing geopolymer reactions to help with allowing a
wider variety of waste materials to be utilized and also help with
the tailoring of binder properties for specific applications.
Several analytical techniques have been used to study geopolymer
reactions. The main analytical techniques used are: Attenuated
total reflectance Fourier-transform infrared (ATR-FTIR)
spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD), Scanning electron microscopy
and Synchrotron radiation-based Fourier transform infrared
(SR-FTIR) spectromicroscopy. This provides the opportunity to
analyse the chemistry of the geopolymer binder at a level of
detail that has not been previously available.
Publications:
Journal paper: Hajimohammadi, A., Provis J L, and Van
Deventer J S J (2008), One-part geopolymer mixes from
geothermal silica and sodium aluminate., Industrial and Engineering
Chemistry Research 47 (23): 9396-9405.
Conference paper (and poster presentation):
Hajimohammadi A, Provis JL, Van Deventer JSJ, One-part
geopolymer mixes from geothermal silica and sodium aluminate, in:
2008 AIChE Annual Meeting. 2008, Philadelphia, PA.
Claire White’s project is:-
Multiscale Modelling of Geopolymers
During 2008 Claire White has been using different
characterization techniques necessary to characterise amorphous
geopolymer precursors, with the main focus on metakaolin. This work
has concentrated on using density functional modelling in
conjunction with synchrotron and neutron experiments (at the
Australian synchrotron and Los Alamos National Laboratory, USA).
The modelling was carried out using time awarded through the Merit
Allocation Scheme, Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing at
the Australian National University, Canberra. This work is at the
forefront of the application of new methodologies to the problem of
solving the atomic structure of metakaolin, which has remained an
open question for the past 40 years. A substantial component of the
work has also concentrated on reconciling discrepancies in the
literature regarding the nature of the crystalline parent
material, kaolinite.
