VALORISATION OF STAINLESS STEEL SLAGS AS A HYDRAULIC BINDER

This work is focused on exploring various cold and hot stage treatment paths of stainless steel slag as a tool to improve its hydraulic properties. At a cold stage, mechanical and chemical activation was applied on industrial stainless steel slag; and it was found that both activation methods effectively improve the reactivity of the studied slag. In addition, the detailed investigation of hydration on two major phases, gamma - C2S and merwinite, revealed that their hydration resulted in the formation of C - S - H gel, typically formed during the hydration of OPC. Regarding the hot stage treatment, the combination of the chemistry modification with the addition of fly ash at 30 wt. % and fast cooling by means of water quenching resulted in a complete amorphisation of the material. Ultimately, the produced material possessing similar properties to granulated blast furnace slag could be used as a latent hydraulic material in blended cements.