RYC Pacific Webinar: Properties of Alkali-Activated Calcined Clay and Lithium Slag Binders, Optimizing LC3 Mix Designs, and Smart Concrete for Harvesting Energy

The second RYC Pacific webinar will take place on Thursday December 7th, 2023 at 5PM Sydney Time and will be one hour and a half long (4*15 minutes presentations + 20-minute Q&A). The registration for this webinar is free.

Theme: Properties of Alkali-Activated Calcined Clay and Lithium Slag Binders, Optimizing LC3 Mix Designs, and Smart Concrete for Harvesting Energy

Speaker 1: Samuel Gomes, University of Technology Sydney (PhD candidate)

Title: Durability Assessment of Alkali-Activated Calcined Clay with GGBFS in Chloride and Carbonation Environment.

This study explores the properties of alkali-activated concrete made from calcined clay (CC) combined with Ground Granulated Blast Furnace Slag (GGBFS), tested under chloride-rich and carbonation conditions. The research bridges the knowledge gap regarding the durability of these materials, vital for determining their expected service life. Electrochemical tests suggest CC/GGBFS alkali-activated concretes present minimal steel corrosion risks, maintaining a high pH after natural/accelerated carbonation.

Speaker 2: Guangtong Huang, University of South Australia (PhD Candidate)

Title: A framework for designing and optimising LC3 cement considering mechanical, environmental and financial properties

This study proposes a multi-objective optimisation (MOO) model for LC3 optimal design by combining a regularised multivariate polynomial regression (MPR) model and optimisation technique. The regularised MPR model was trained on a dataset of 366 LC3 mixture designs to predict the compressive strength and achieved reliable predictions, with R² of 0.927 and MSE of 3.445 on the testing set.

Speaker 3: SM Arifur Rahman, Curtin University (PhD Candidate)

Title: Potential of Lithium Slag as a Sustainable Pozzolan in the Development of Low-Carbon Concrete

This research investigates the potential of lithium slag, a byproduct of lithium refining, as a supplementary cementitious material (SCM) for sustainable concrete development by reducing the carbon footprint related to cement production. The study focuses on assessing the pozzolanic activity of lithium slag through chemical tests and microstructural analysis.

Speaker 4: Carlos Espinal Zapata, Deakin University (PhD Candidate)

Title: Thermoelectric cement-based materials as cost-effective solution for harvesting energy

Traditional thermoelectric materials are costly and face significant scalability challenges.  This study explores the potential of thermoelectric (TE) cement-based materials as an innovative and cost-effective solution to pave the way for a new generation of scalable thermoelectric materials. This talk delves into the new smart study of thermoelectric energy harvesting, a technology that harnesses temperature gradients between surfaces to generate electricity through the Seebeck effect.

This webinar is brought to you by RYC Pacific and hosted by Dr Marie Joshua Tapas.