The ancient Romans were masters of building and engineering, perhaps most famously represented by the aqueducts.
Mixing quicklime with water produces slaked lime, or calcium hydroxide: a slightly less reactive, less caustic paste. According to theory, it was this slaked lime that ancient Romans mixed with the pozzolana.
Based on the team's analysis, the lime clasts in their samples are not consistent with this method. Rather, Roman concrete was probably made by mixing the quicklime directly with the pozzolana and water at extremely high temperatures, by itself or in addition to slaked lime, a process the team calls"hot mixing" that results in the lime clasts.
So, the team tested their findings by making pozzolanic concrete from ancient and modern recipes using quicklime. They also made a control concrete without quicklime and performed crack tests. Sure enough, the cracked quicklime concrete was fully healed within two weeks, but the control concrete stayed cracked.
The team is now working on commercializing their concrete as a more environmentally friendly alternative to current concretes. "It's exciting to think about how these more durable concrete formulations could expand not only the service life of these materials, but also how it could improve the durability of 3D-printed concrete formulations,"
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