Methods of incorporation of new reaction products in thermodynamic databases of cementitious systems

Strategic blending of supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) into ordinary portland cement (OPC) helps reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions from concrete production. Expanding thermodynamic databases to include new reaction products from blended cements improves computational approaches used to understand the impact of blending SCMs with cement. Determination of thermodynamic parameters of cement reaction products based on temperature-dependent solubility is widely used in cement research; however, assumptions, limitations, and potential errors due to intercorrelation of the thermodynamic parameters in these calculation methods are rarely discussed. Here, methods for obtaining thermodynamic parameters are critically reviewed, including discussion of experimental validation. The discussion herein provides useful guidance to improve and validate the process of determining thermodynamic parameters of new reaction products from SCM-OPC reactions.