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Community Based Research and Innovations in Civil Engineering IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science 796 (2021) 012037 doi:10.1088/1755-1315/796/1/012037

LIME CALCINED CLAY CEMENT (LC3): A Review

S. Sahith Reddy and M. Achyutha Kumar Reddy*
P.G. Student, Department of Civil Engineering, Koneru Lakshmaiah Education Foundation,
Vaddeswaram, Guntur, India – 522502
*Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, Koneru Lakshmaiah Education Foundation,
Vaddeswaram, Guntur, India – 522502
*E-mail: [email protected]
ABSTRACT
Discovery of alternative to the pozzolanic materials generated from industrial wastes was
needed because of its unavailability when the industries was shutdown permanently.
Consumption of pozzolanic materials in concrete will be a safer solution for this problem.
Numerous studies were presented for utilization of fly ash, Ground Granular Blast Furnace
Slag (GGBS), Metakaolin and silica fume as a pozzolanic material in concrete. LC3 is a type
of cement by mixing of limestone, calcined clay and gypsum, a few literatures were available
on LC3. This paper presents the overview of research work presented on physical, chemical,
performance in cement mortars like consistency, setting times & compressive strength,
properties of fresh & hardened concrete like workability, compressive strength, split tensile
strength, flexure strength made LC3.
KEYWORDS: LC3, physical properties, cement mortar, compressive strength, and durability.
1. INTRODUCTION
Infrastructure and construction sectors have always been the key indicators of growth and
prosperity of a country’s economy [1]. The use of supplementary cementitious materials
(SCMs) replacing conventional materials has a huge potential to reduce carbon emissions and
precious resource consumption in cement production, especially for developing countries [2].
Introducing environment friendly materials is one of the most fascinating and highly
preferred research fields in engineering. In civil engineering and related disciplines, concrete
is a high-demand material for the building and construction sector. We can observe a
production of nearly 1 ton of CO2 production of every ton of ordinary Portland cement
(OPC) [3]. Being one of the most significant sources of greenhouse gases, the cement
industry is responsible for about 7% of the total CO2 emissions worldwide. Today> 80% of
SCMs used to reduce the clinker factor in cement are either limestone, fly ash or slag.
Cement production in 2014 was 4.3 billion tonnes. Emerging economies (China, India, CIS,
others Asia) account for roughly 3.5billion tonnes, 81% of the world's production.
Industrialized countries (Europe, USA, Japan) produced roughly 0.4 billion tonnes, 9% of the

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Community Based Research and Innovations in Civil Engineering IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science 796 (2021) 012037 doi:10.1088/1755-1315/796/1/012037

world's cement production Calcined clays, particularly in combination with limestone (LC3
technology) have tremendous potential to extend the use of supplementary cementitious
materials as a partial replacement of clinker in cement and concrete [4].
In a recent joint research between Cuba and Switzerland, a new ternary blended cement
called Limestone Calcined Clay Cement (LC3), which can contain as little as 50% clinker by
using calcined clay and limestone, was developed. Studies show that LC3, can give similar or
better performance than OPC and PPC in many aspects. Optimal composition in LC3 and its
chemistry has also been explained in previous studies. It was observed from the first pilot
scale production of LC3 in India that a good performance of the cement can be achieved even
from clays with very low kaolinitic content.
The kaolinite clay available in India has been found to have pozzolanic properties which
upon being heated up to 800 °C undergoes dihydroxylation and converts into reactive
pozzolana [5]. Mono carboaluminates have been observed as a hydration product in
limestone blended cements which is found to be more stable than mono sulphoaluminate in
the presence of limestone [6]. In this paper we study about the properties in a deeper manner.
This paper reports a review on the utilization of LC3 in cement mortar as well as concrete.
2. LC3 MATERIALS
The essential materials used in preparation of LC3 blend are Clinker, Calcined clay,
Limestone and Gypsum.
2.1 Clinker
Clinker is produced by heating Calcareous and Aluminous material at 14000c during this
heating process, 60 to 62 % of carbon dioxide is liberated. The clinker produced after heating
will be in forms of lumps displayed in Figure. 1.

Figure.1: clinker in lumps form

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Community Based Research and Innovations in Civil Engineering IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science 796 (2021) 012037 doi:10.1088/1755-1315/796/1/012037

In LC3, clinker content is reduced to 50% thereby carbon dioxide emissions were reduced to
30% lower than OPC and 11% lower than PPC [5]. The various proportions of clinker
content used in this study are 40%, 50% and 60%.
2.2 Calcined clay
Clay that is rich in kaolin mineral around greater than 40% is suitable for LC3. Clay can be
calcined in conventional rotary kilns, flash calcination unit, roller hearth kilns, shuttle kilns
and muffle furnace [6]. When clay containing Kaolin is calcined, metakaolin is formed which
contains aluminosilicate which reacts with calcium hydroxide as conventional pozzolana to
give csh gel and Aluminium hydrate. In addition, the Alumina can react with limestone to
produce carboalumination hydrates.
2.3 Limestone
LC3 can increase the life of mines by reducing wastage of raw material. Low calcite
limestone with impurities like dolomite and quartz can be used in LC3 along with limestone
that is not suitable for clinker production can also be used in LC3. A new ternary blended
cement has been developed based on the combination of Portland cement with calcined clay
and limestone ultimately with low quality-overburden material that is normally considered
waste for traditional production: low-grade clay and dolomite rich limestone. Firing takes
place at half the clinkerization temperature. As the Limestone is not calcined, thus it is does
not contribute to an increase in CO2 emissions. Three industrial trial productions and several
laboratory trial productions of limestone calcined clay cement in India was carried out
between 2014 to 2017, Figure 2. displays the calcined clay at different temperatures [7].

Figure 2. Calcined clay at different temperatures

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Community Based Research and Innovations in Civil Engineering IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science 796 (2021) 012037 doi:10.1088/1755-1315/796/1/012037

The calcium carbonate supplied through limestone to the system and the extra alumina
provided by calcined clay will further react to form alumina phases
The material has a residence time of around 60 min at the firing chamber, and the reactivity
achieved is reasonably good [8] [9]. Flash calcination takes place in special flash calciners.
The original clayey material should be previously dried and ground to powder. It is then fed
to a stream of hot gas at temperatures of around 800–900 °C with residence time of a few
seconds. The technology enables implementation of several heat recovery cycles, thus the
potential for efficiency is high, with power consumption in the rate of 2211 MJ/t of
metakaolin flash [10]. Few authors made the comparison between LC3 with OPC as well as
PPC, Table 1. Displays the chemical composition.
Table1 1. Chemical composition of materials used in the study.
LC3
S. No Component OPC PPC
Clinker Calcined clay limestone
1 CaO 64.59 1.28 63.81 0.09 48054
2 SiO2 19.01 59.32 21.12 54.43 10.7
3 Al2O3 4.17 29.95 5.24 24.95 1.74
4 Fe2O3 3.89 4.32 3.41 5.08 1.62
5 MgO 0.88 0.61 3.06 0.19 0.467
6 Mn2O3 - - 0.06 - 0.035
7 Na2O 0.16 0.16 0.32 0.05 -
8 K2O 0.59 1.44 0.19 0.21 0.13
9 TiO2 0.23 - 0.10 1.41 0.206
10 SO3 1.70 0.16 0.63 - 0.01
11 LOI 1.40 - 0.98 9.58 37.09

3.PROPERTIES OF LC3:
3.1 Physical and chemical properties
Few authors reported on the properties of LC3 composition, plenty of ambiguity in the
physical properties of calcined due to its source of collection. The comparison was done with
OPC as well as PPC, Table 2. displays the comparison between physical properties of LC3
[11].

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Community Based Research and Innovations in Civil Engineering IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science 796 (2021) 012037 doi:10.1088/1755-1315/796/1/012037

S. No Property LC3 OPC PPC

1 Specific gravity 2.90 3.15 3.10
2 D50(µm) 4.30 14.25 18.76
3 Normal Consistency 31 30 29
4 Initial setting time 90 90 120
5 Final setting time 180 190 180
3.2 Cement Mortar
The authors performed plenty of tests on LC3 mortars, reported that the LC3 exhibits almost
same compressive strength as OPC 43 grade cement. It is also key to mention that w/c was
fixed based on the standard consistency measured, so the LC3 system had higher w/c ratio
based on the consistency. Lower workability was reported upon blending the calcined
bentonite to the cement mortar.
3.3 Cement concrete
Several concrete mixtures were designed and produced in the laboratory using all the blends
of LC3, OPC and PPC. Polycarbonxylate Ether based chemical admixture was used to
achieve a slump in the range of 75 mm to 100 mm as the was found to give the best flow with
LC3blends. LC3 shown better strength properties than OPC and PPC.[12] Perhaps due to the
non-uniform calcination of the clays, a large batch-to-batch variation in the strengths of the
concrete was observed, however, it was generally observed that for a given water to cement
ratio, LC3 shown better performance and all most all equals with PPC. The substitution of
cement by calcined kaolinite resulted in a considerable increase in strength from 7 days
compared to the control mortar. This increase is explained by the pozzolanic character of the
calcined clay that combines CH to form additional C–S–H, filling more space and thus
increasing the mechanical properties.
3.4 Carbonation of concrete
The carbonation depths deduced from phenolphthalein indicator test together with the scatters
up to 8 weeks exposure to 1% CO2 and after 30 weeks of natural carbonation. OPC-50
specimens exposed to 1% CO2 did not show any clear carbonation front. No carbonation
front could be report for OPC-50. Overall, results show that the resistance of LC3 concrete
against carbonation is reducing when increasing the OPC substitution rate. It shows the LC3
performed against the carbonation of concrete in better manner than that of PPC and OPC.

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Community Based Research and Innovations in Civil Engineering IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science 796 (2021) 012037 doi:10.1088/1755-1315/796/1/012037

3.5 Porosity
Munisamy et. al., 2018, performed few tests to assess the porosity of mortar with a prism of
40 mm × 40 mm × 160 mm in size of specimens based on the study of [12]. The reported the
increment in the porosity by incorporating the LC3 in the concrete.
3.6 Alkali silica reaction
M. S. H. khan et. al., 2018, performed the test on alkali silica reaction. The clay tested in
LC3-65 and LC3-50 contain 50% of calcined kaolinite. The mortar bars after curing in fog
condition for 28 days were soaked in 0.32 M of NaOH solutions at 38˚C [13]. Generally, the
use of supplementary cementing materials has an effective preventive effect against alkali
silica reaction in concrete due to the lower alkalinity and the presence of Al in pore solution
[14].
4 APPLICATIONS OF LC3
Building materials such as Micro Concrete Roofing Tiles (MCR), solid concrete bricks,
autoclaved aerated concrete (AAC) blocks, RCC door and window frames and paving blocks
were produced using LC 3 The building materials were found to meet the requirements of the
relevant standard, without any changes to the usual mixture designs and production
processes. Most importantly, it was found that no retraining of the workers or re-calibration
of equipment was required when ordinary Portland or pozzolanic cements were replaced by
LC3during these productions. A two-storey building, having plain and reinforced concrete
elements was built in central India, completely using LC3.It was once again found that no
retraining of the workers was required to use the cements and no major changes to mixture
designs were required to produce concretes like those usually used in such construction [15].
These observations are important to demonstrate the applicability of LC3in general use
applications, as a replacement of OPC or PPC. Additionally, to test the suitability of the
cement in automated production processes, concrete paver blocks and autoclaved aerated
concrete (AAC) blocks were produced in fully automated plants. It was once again found that
only minor modifications to mixture designs were required for the production and the
products still met the requirements of the standards. The AAC blocks were used for the
construction of the walls of a building in the complex of the Swiss Embassy in New Delhi,
without any change needed in the construction process.
5. CONCLUSIONS

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Community Based Research and Innovations in Civil Engineering IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science 796 (2021) 012037 doi:10.1088/1755-1315/796/1/012037

Plenty investigations were conducted by to evaluate the properties of LC3 mortar as well as
concrete. The subsequent conclusions were drawn based on their reported results.
In this constrained context, this study has shown that LC3 represent a grounded alternative.
This study has assessed, from both an economic and environmental point of view, three
cements that can be produced in Cuba. The LC3 technology, which involve the combination
of 50% of clinker, 15% of unburned limestone and 30% of calcined clay (and 5% Gypsum),
was an energy and cost efficient technology. Savings in term of greenhouse gas emissions as
well as production and investment costs were significant. The presented results take into
account a number of variables and are robust. LC3 had therefore great potential to provide a
viable opportunity to meet an increase in cement demand with low CO2 released and low
dollar investment. Despite the problems in the production of the LC3 blends,it was found that
the blends that used the higher quality clays consistently gave better strengths that the OPC in
mortars, concretes and building materials despite having less than 40% calcined kaolinite
content in the calcined clay used.
REFERENCES

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Community Based Research and Innovations in Civil Engineering IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science 796 (2021) 012037 doi:10.1088/1755-1315/796/1/012037

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