Talk:Geopolymer cement

Article Clearly Written as An Advertisement
This article, along with the one on geopolymers in general, is clearly written as an advertisement. I have a hunch that it was written by the Geopolymer Institute, as said institute is repeatedly mentioned in the article. I am not sure what to do, as I really do not know much about geopolymers, so I await a fellow Wikipedian who is better than me in this area of knowledge to help fix it.

自教育 (talk) 23:04, 24 February 2013 (UTC) - ANSWER →I have a big problem with this type of statement and I presented it during one of our plenary session at the last Geopolymer Camp, 2013 before 80 geopolymer specialists (scientists, civil engineers). See the program at http://www.geopolymer.org/camp/gpcamp-2013 ; July 09, Schedule 10:45-13:00: First session Themes: Geopolymer molecular chemistry, scientific investigations, GP-Raw materials. Editing the Internet Wikipedia pages on “geopolymer” and “geopolymer cement“...

I also presented the qualifications of the editor who wrote the above statement; he has a "Japanese"logo name (i.e. unknown), with qualifications I am pasting here (copied from his User page), I quote: ''I am an undergraduate anthropology student in the state of California in the USA, but I have a good amount of self-education in history, theoretical politics, economics, husbandry and abstract art. I greatly admire Wikipedia's philosophy and how it spreads knowledge across the globe. With that said, I think I would be most helpful in furthering Wikipedia in the following areas'': ''Andean studies, as I have a strong interest in and a large amount of information about Andean Civilizations. I also see a dearth of information about them on Wikipedia, even compared with the Mesoamerican Civilizations, and I wish to help fix this.'' Linguistics, especially semantics, writing systems and constructed languages but all areas as well Various underutilized crops and neglected agricultural areas, such as New Guinea or West Africa. Things related to the Sumerian Language, as I have a pretty good knowledge of the language and I see a lack of information on it compared with other Classical Languages (unrelated to unsolved issues in our knowledge of Sumerian), such as Latin or Sanskrit. ''Ornamental fish species. I, an aquarist, would like to expand Wikipedia in this area as well; I wrote the article on the Gold Tetra, by the way.'' I also have a strong desire to help counter ethnocentrism and promote a more perfectly worldwide view in Wikipedia in general, as I find that this is a rampant issue. I am very happy to assist in any of these areas and will surely be greatly increasing my input into Wikipedia soon.

The Geopolymer scientific community present at the Geopolymer Camp 2013, July 09 asked me to remove the tag, which I am doing now. Prof. Joseph Davidovits (talk) 17:18, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

User-friendly Quick Lime ???
On September 9, 2013, one editor wrote: "Quick lime is relatively safe..." and put a message disputing the fact that quick lime CaO is qualified as being User-hostile. Well, it is well known that Quicklime is Calcium Oxide CaO and is a UN Class 8 corrosive chemical and should be handled with great care. Apparently the editor referred to it as regular lime which is hydrated or slaked lime, Ca(OH)2. Nevertheless, CaO (quick lime) is classified as "CORROSIVE" chemical under 49CFR 173.136. For details go to http://environmentalchemistry.com/yogi/hazmat/placards/class8-chemicals.html

As a consequence, I have removed the message from the article. Prof. Joseph Davidovits (talk) 16:39, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

This article appears to be an advertisment
The article appears to be an advertisement for the industry. It is written by the main proponent of the use of the Geopolymer Cement, has no other contributors. The arguments in the above discussion are "ad personam" - the Wikipedia editors can point to problems with an article without being experts in the field.

The problems are numerous. There is very little chemistry, although this is a novel chemical process. The separation of alkali compounds into hostile (CaO) and fiendly (CaOH)2 is clearly biased (it is enough to look at the MSDN of Ca(OH)2). The bigger problem is in calculating of the carbon footprint. The argument goes as follows: because it is a by-product of some other product, we can arbitrarily assign it zero emissions, and the other product 100%. This requires a discussion, careful consideration of dividing the footprint into different components of value, which is lacking. The article needs a serious rewrite before it would be useful as a source of unbiased information to the reader. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MarekZielinski (talk • contribs) 13:53, 25 November 2013 (UTC)


 * ANSWER: As far as the CO2 emissions are concerned, your comment is irrelevant. If you had read carefully the article, you would have noticed that, for Rock-based geopolymer cement, the calculations provide 2 numbers for energy needs and CO2 emission. One is calculated with the slag being considered a by product, i.e. CO2=0, and the second with the slag being manufactured at 1450°C, as a regular ingredient. Please take the time to read the Table, and also in the text: we have two cases, the most favorable case (slag as by-product), the less favorable case (slag manufacture). Prof. Joseph Davidovits (talk) 14:49, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Proposal to merge with Geopolymer
I suggest that this page should be merged with Geopolymer, and have tagged it as such. Much of the content is duplicated, and there is a good section on geopolymer cement on the main Geopolymer page, so the existence of this separate page only serves to confuse.Johnprovis (talk) 20:02, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

This is nonsense and I have erased the banner. J. Provis should also propose to merge the 3 Wiki pages Portland cement, Alumino-silicate-cement, pozzolanic cement, with the generic page "Cement". Geopolymer is a generic term that covers several fields of applications and products, as well as chemistry. Geopolymer cement is a product. It deserves to get its own page. Prof. Joseph Davidovits. Prof. Joseph Davidovits (talk) 16:41, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Strongly disagree. I have implemented the merge - geopolymer cement is clearly a subset of geopolymer, and all of the content in the 'geopolymer cement' section of the main geopolymer article was already present in this article anyway. And for what it's worth, there are no articles entitled either 'Alumino-silicate-cement' or 'pozzolanic cement' in Wikipedia, although pozzolanic cements are described in the main Portland cement article (this section). The inclusion of geopolymer cements within the geopolymer article correctly represents their status as one member of the broader class of geopolymers, that is what a hierarchical classification is intended to do.Johnprovis (talk) 23:40, 16 January 2016 (UTC)


 * After 18 months, I suggest undoing this merge for the following reasons: first, the main geopolymer page is too long. Second, the main geopolymer page is written in such a way it is depicting a polymer chemistry with scientific terminology. A specific page dedicated to geopolymer cement makes sense as contributors can add more data, be less scientific but more technical focusing on engineers rather than scientists. Third, putting a huge amount of information about geopolymer cement in the main geopolymer page is suggesting to readers that cement is the main application; it is far from true. Today, the fact is I can't find more than 5 companies in the world that are actually selling and manufacturing this product. I set aside startups that have done only a small pilot project. In fact, a quick search shows there are many more companies commercializing other geopolymer products that are not cement or concrete. The truth is geopolymer cement is, today, a "niche" market, not the broader use of this chemistry as some authors may hint. So, I believe that giving this application its proper page is relevant. When the production of geopolymer cement will be the main application, we could reconsider this suggestion. But again, I believe it is better to separate scientific, general purpose articles from technical and specific ones. AndersPoly (talk) 22:55, 19 June 2017 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I strongly disagree - there is far more geopolymer cement production going on, at least in terms of volume (10 or more companies, with total production exceeding tens of thousands of tonnes p.a., in areas from infrastructure to nuclear waste immobilisation, and up to and including construction of an entire airport - https://www.geopolymer.org/news/70000-tonnes-geopolymer-concrete-airport/) than there are companies making and actually selling geopolymers for other applications. The main geopolymer article is a complete mess, and is vastly over-long, I completely agree with you on that point (see my comments, and some strident disagreements between myself and Prof. Joseph Davidovits, in the talk page there; because I am an active academic researcher in the area I've been told I have a conflict of interest, so I have refrained from actually editing the page in recent times). However, I would suggest that this means that the main article needs to be improved, trimmed and focused, not that the geopolymer cements section needs to be re-extracted, re-converted to a separate article repeating a large fraction of the information at geopolymer, and left to further confuse people. Johnprovis (talk) 08:48, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Is this what the Romans used?
I.e. https://www.nature.com/news/seawater-is-the-secret-to-long-lasting-roman-concrete-1.22231 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.134.139.72 (talk) 01:00, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

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What the ? Why isn't "normal" cement and concrete on this page (it is also an "alkali-activated material")
I came here wanting to learn more because a "geopolymer" has won an award at COP 26. I've ended up not understanding a darned thing. My first question is why this is not merged with geopolymer page? My second is this: from the definition set out in the intro, the term seems to me to apply to "normal" concrete too. So what is it that sets this apart from "normal concrete" when water and wotnot is added to cause the reaction to start?

Beyond these two concerns, also I came across this paper (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328462723_Alkali_activated_materials_review_of_current_problems_and_possible_solutions) and yet no mention is being made of peer review of the downsides of "geopolymers" when it seems EXTREMELY strong NaOH is needed. What are the energy requirements? This is important because yes, I understand that no CO2 is released during manufacture, but by the same token if we hare having to deploy a lot of (say) electrical energy to synthesize the raw materials, then of course if the electricity is "dirty" then we're at a situation whereby CO2 is released during manufacture.

And again I find myself utter confused as to why this is characterised as (say) "Alkali activated material" (with reference to the title of the pdf linked above) when "normal" cement is also "activated", this time by CaOH, which is also alkali.

This entire subject is a mess and it seems to me anything which has a caustic agent thrown at it and then gets some sense of hardening effect gets to qualify. That means "normal" cement too, i.e that makes "normal" concrete?

(I'm posting this on the geopolymers page too). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.68.0.41 (talk) 16:59, 1 December 2021 (UTC)


 * I've responded on the Talk:Geopolymer page Johnprovis (talk) 15:22, 2 December 2021 (UTC)