Issue 10, 2021

Provenancing of cement using elemental analyses and isotope techniques – the state-of-the-art and future perspectives

Abstract

With the aim of identifying the origin and the manufacturer of a cement, a reliable procedure that provides unambiguous results is needed. Such procedure could resolve practical issues in damage research, liability issues and forensic investigations. A substantial number of attempts for fingerprinting of building materials, including cement, has already been carried out during the last decades. Most of them were based on concentration analysis of the main elements/components. This review provides an overview of provenance studies of cement and the main approaches commonly used. Provenance studies of cement via isotope techniques are also presented and discussed as representatives of the state-of-the-art in the field. Due to the characteristic properties and the occurrence of carefully selected isotope ratios, unique fingerprints of different kinds of materials can be provided by these methods. This property has largely been explored in various scientific fields such as geo- and cosmochemistry, food forensics, archaeology, geochronology, biomedical studies, and climate change processes. However, the potential of isotope techniques in cement and concrete research for provenance studies has barely been investigated. Therefore, the review outlines a suitable approach using isotope ratios, which could lead to reliable provenancing of cementitious materials in the future.

Graphical abstract: Provenancing of cement using elemental analyses and isotope techniques – the state-of-the-art and future perspectives

Article information

Article type
Critical Review
Submitted
28 avr. 2021
Accepted
02 sept. 2021
First published
03 sept. 2021
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

J. Anal. At. Spectrom., 2021,36, 2030-2042

Provenancing of cement using elemental analyses and isotope techniques – the state-of-the-art and future perspectives

A. Kazlagić, J. Vogl, G. J. G. Gluth and D. Stephan, J. Anal. At. Spectrom., 2021, 36, 2030 DOI: 10.1039/D1JA00144B

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements