Method for recycling cement-containing materials to produce reclaimed fines for use in cement-based materials and structures

Abstract

An environmentally-friendly substitute for virgin dry cement is provided. The substitute is obtained as reclaimed cementitious fines produced by recycling cement-containing waste materials, such as recycled concrete aggregate and demolished brick structures. The reclaimed cementitious fines are used as cementitious material in new concrete, mortar, cement paste and other cement-containing materials and structures. A recycling method involves obtaining cement-containing waste material, crushing the cement-containing waste material, gathering the crushed cement-containing waste materials, the crushed cement-containing waste materials comprising reclaimed particles derived from said cement-containing waste material; and sorting the crushed cement-containing waste materials by particle size to obtain reclaimed cementitious fines having sizes in a desired particle size range, e.g., 0.1 micron to 200 micron for use as a substitute for virgin dry cement powder. Notably, the crushing/tumbling methodologies used to obtain the reclaimed particles produce significantly less carbon dioxide that the methodologies used to obtain virgin dry cement.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.