Experimental and operations viability assessment of powder-to-powder (P2P) mixture of graphene and cement for industrial applications

Studies have demonstrated that a minute quantity of graphene is sufficient to boost cement characteristics, but the attainment of good dispersion and uniformity of the resultant graphene-cement mixture remains a challenge. To alleviate these challenges, this study proposes a low-energy powder-to-powder homogeniser for dispersing reasonably large quantities of graphene powder into cement powders. Microscopic analysis of graphene dispersion from two samples (1% and 0.02% graphene) at 5x, 10x and 20x objectives revealed that graphene accounts for 1.3% and 0.09% over the cement area respectively, which is relatively uniform across all selected samples. Furthermore, four different dosages of graphene were used to validate the impacts of various proportions of graphene, i.e., 0%, 0.02%, 0.04% and 0.06% (by mass of cement) on two types of cement (i.e., Portland cement CEM I 52.5 N and Portland cement CEM II 42.5 N) which also revealed compressive strength increases up to 25% at 7 and 28 days.