Hydrothermal transformation of fly ash to tobermorite or katoite: Impact of Ca and Si concentration in the liquid phase without alkali activation

In the study of hydrothermal conversion of fly ash to calcium silicate hydrates (C–S–H), the concentration of Ca and Si in the liquid phase plays a vital role in determining the hydrothermal transformation results. This paper selected a fly ash as a research object, which can leach a high Si concentration into the solution in the hydrothermal process even in a slight alkaline solution, based on a new finding when studying the alkali dissolution kinetics of different fly ashes. To explore the effects of Ca and Si concentrations in the liquid phase on the hydrothermal transformation of fly ash to tobermorite or katoite, Na 2 SiO 3 (Na 2 O·xSiO 2 ·yH 2 O) and CaSO 4 were used to change the concentration of Si and Ca in the liquid in the hydrothermal system. Characterization methods such as XRD, SEM, infrared spectroscopy, and solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance indicated that a little more concentration of Si can promote the transformation from fly ash to tobermorite and persuade the conversion of the Si–O tetrahedron in C–S–H from Q 2 to Q 3 and Q 4 . However, too high a liquid Si concentration made the hydrothermal product change to colloidal calcium silicate. On the other hand, a high Ca concentration in the liquid was found to lead to the conversion of the hydrothermal product from tobermorite to katoite. According to the above results, the deep transformation from fly ash to tobermorite under the conditions of a low temperature of 160 °C and no extra alkali addition was achieved by the induction of a small quantity of Na 2 SiO 3 .