Standards Development

Scope

This International Standard specifies the general delivery requirements for all types of cement clinker except white cement clinker. This is a base document for the order or appropriate product which includes: Terms and definitions, classifications of clinker, physical requirements, chemical requirements, components, granulometric, activity, uniformity, crushability, packaging and package marking, storage, inspection, sampling, preparation of test specimen, rejection, transportation, and so on.

Purpose

The pattern of global cement trading has been changed from cement to clinker due to changes in domestic and global regulations to protect the environment requiring the closure of old, environmentally-unfriendly factories, especially in China in recent years. clinker sales and exports have grown severely and it is regarded as an independent commodity in international trade now. Besides, it is expected, this trend to be continued progressively in the future, as a more profitable business, due to lower transportation costs, less packaging costs, lower tax, and capability of producing a variety of blended cement by clinker.

In this case, most of the countries which have been hitherto importing cement, begin to establish grinding mills to import clinker.

Field observations indicate most of the customers fail to identify the real quality of clinker due to lack of clinker standard. They are just looking for fresh clinker with a high percent of Alite phase (more than 60%) according to Bogue calculation or high LSF (more than 95).

This has led to increased energy consumption in cement plants to produce such a clinker and subsequently rise air pollutants, while according to research they have to consider at least 6 requirements for clinker as follows:

1.1 Performance of clinker (Making cement by appropriate Balin, gypsum and PSD to measure standard strength and/or Analysing by XRD, microscopy and Isothermal calorimetry)

1.2 Classification of clinker (Granulometry composition of clinker, Uniformity)

1.3 Crushability for evaluation of energy consumption (in their own grinding mills)

1.4 Mineralogy Requirements

1.5 Chemical Requirements

And the most important requirement in this standard is the determination of cement clinker performance Index by the ICC and/or standard strength method in order to clarify the real quality of clinker phases. It means producers may achieve a high quality of clinker by optimization of the cooling process, burning zone, etc. instead of increasing Alite phases or LSF.

Therefore, clinker standardization is a very important tool for awareness of customers to identify real quality in clinker and removing personal tastes or arbitrary behaviour in global trading which leads to reducing energy consumption and consequently reducing environmental pollution.