Preparation of calcium silicate absorbent from iron blast furnace slag

Calcium silicate hydrate (CSH) solids were prepared from hydrated lime and iron blast furnace slag in an aqueous agitated slurry at 92 degrees C. While it was hoped a minimal lime/slag ratio could be used to create near-amorphous CSH, the surface area of the product improved by increasing the lime/slag weight ratio to 2. The addition of gypsum to the lime/slag system dramatically improved the formation of surface area, creating solids with 139 m2/g after 30 hr of reaction when only a minimal amount of lime was present. The SO2 reactivity of solids prepared with gypsum greatly exceeded that of hydrated lime, achieving greater than 70-80% conversion of the alkalinity after 1 hr of reaction with SO2. The use of CaCl2 as an additive to the lime/slag system, in lieu of gypsum, also produced high-surface-area solids, 115 m2/g after 21 hr of reaction. However, the SO2 reactivity of these sorbents was relatively low given the high surface area. This emphasized that the correlation between surface area and SO2 reactivity was highly dependent on the solid phase, which was subsequently dependent on slurry composition.