The History of Cement

The Meaning of the Word "Cement"

The name "cement" comes from the Latin word "caementum," meaning a chip of hewn stone.

The History of Cement and Its First Use

It is known that the oldest material used as a binder was lime. Fairly pure limestone was heated to produce lime, water was added and it was mixed with sand, giving lime mortar.

The first concrete was used in the Roman Empire. In Rome, the Castel Sant'Angelo was built in 138 BC. Today, while the stones of this building have eroded, the concrete still retains its properties.

Examples of Cement Use

Various binders were used in many structures symbolizing the civilizations of their time, such as the Egyptian Pyramids, the Great Wall of China, and castles built at various periods.

The Greeks made mortar by mixing the volcanic tuffs of the island of Santorini with lime, or with a kind of hydraulic lime obtained from clayey limestone. In Egypt, calcined impure gypsum was used instead of cement.

About 2000 years ago, the Greeks and Romans ground lime together with volcanic ash called "pozzolana" (now known as pozzolan) and, adding this mixture to sand, used it as mortar in the laying of stones.

Although various binders were used in past ages, those engaged in construction work did not have sufficient knowledge about how the binders they used were obtained or about their working conditions. For example, the Roman scholar Gaius Plinius wrote that it was incomprehensible "why lime, obtained by burning stone with fire, burns again when it comes into contact with water."

In 27 BC, "Roman architecture" was created using cement in the great "Colosseum" and the "Roman baths."

The Romans produced cement by grinding volcanic ash and adding it to lime; seeing that the cement could set underwater, they used it in harbour construction. Later, this mixture was named "Pozzolanic Cement," inspired by the village of Pozzuoli near Vesuvius in Rome, from which the volcanic ash was taken.

In England, volcanic ash was ground and shaped into bricks and tiles for use. Great medieval cathedrals such as Chartres and Rheims in France and Durham, Lincoln and Rochester in England were built using the advanced technologies of their time. In their work, the Romans were unaware of the technologies used a thousand years earlier.

The Romans most likely observed the properties of volcanic ash and used it for various purposes in their structures. In the 1st century BC, Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, an architect and engineer in Rome, dealt with the building technology of the past in his book titled "Ten Books of Architecture," and mentioned "concrete for polishing the floor and obtaining a solid floor." In this book, regarding pozzolan, it was mentioned that the mixture of lime and crushed stones not only gave strength to buildings but also hardened underwater.

In the use of cement, those living in Europe lagged behind the Romans. Mortars were prepared especially with lime, and for this reason hardening occurred later. The use of pozzolan in mortar preparation was rediscovered by Europeans in the Middle Ages.

In 1756, John Smeaton, who was commissioned to build the Eddystone Lighthouse, examined the chemical properties of lime and reached important conclusions about its binding properties. Later, in the light of these studies, Joseph Parker produced a binder known as "Roman Cement," whose raw material was the limestone around London; the cement produced was used in canal and harbour construction. In the same years, the "English Cement" produced by the Englishman James Frost was not as popular as Roman Cement.

With the Renaissance, a new era began in which people thought differently, and the doors of the industrial revolution opened. In the 18th century, lighthouses had to be built for England's fleets of warships used for trade and colonization. This was a driving force for the development of the cement sector.

In England, the Eddystone rocks off Plymouth harbour were a constant problem and a danger for ships entering and leaving the harbour. To make things easier for sailors through the use of mortars that could harden underwater, the roughly 37-metre-high Eddystone Lighthouse was built between 1757 and 1759; in its construction, a mixture of lime, clay and iron slag that hardened underwater was used. The lighthouse was fastened to iron rods that were secured with lead into holes opened in the seabed.

In 1756, the English engineer John Smeaton determined that soft limestone containing a certain proportion of clay formed the best cement. About 40 years after this, James Parker produced cement in England from limestone with a fairly high proportion of impurities. The production of cement from clay and limestone was begun in France by Louis Vicat in 1813, and in England by James Frost in 1822.

The binder produced by the Frenchman Louis Vicat was used in bridges and concrete channels. Vicat investigated the ability of hydraulic lime, of binders obtained from a mixture of lime and pozzolan, and of natural cement to harden underwater; he produced a synthetic hydraulic binder by combining silica, alumina and calcium oxide in certain proportions, and his work shed light on the production of the Portland cement in use today. He used the hydraulic binder he produced in one of the piers of the Souillac Bridge, whose construction was completed in 1822.

In 1824, the bricklayer Joseph Aspdin in Leeds, England, heated ground clay and limestone until the limestone was calcined, then ground this mixture again; when he added water to the ground material and mixed it, he saw that the mixture hardened after a while. Because it resembled the stone from the quarries operated in the "Isle of Portland on the British Coast" region, which was widely used in building construction in England, Aspdin named the cement he produced "Portland Cement" and also took out its patent.

It is known that the "Wakefield Arms" building, which still exists today next to Kirkgate Station in England, was built with Joseph Aspdin's binder. The process of firing and grinding raw materials at high temperatures was later also carried out in 1845 by the Englishman Isaac Johnson.

In 1845, Isaac Johnson produced the first modern Portland cement by firing a mixture of limestone and clay at a temperature of 1400 °C–1500 °C, similar to what is used today. This demonstrated the importance of temperature in cement production. At high temperatures, clinkerization occurred and highly reactive, stronger cement components formed.

In the first half of the 19th century, cement began to be needed on a large scale in America. In 1818, one year after construction of the Erie Canal began, the engineer Canvass White determined that the material in a quarry in Madison County near New York acquired natural hydraulic properties by itself through a simple process. The cement produced using this material was used in the construction of the Erie Canal.

In 1850, the American David O. Saylor obtained natural cement by firing the cement rock he found in a kiln and then grinding it. However, it was determined that the strength of the natural cement produced in the United States and some other countries was weaker than that of Portland cement.

While cement production in Europe had reached a certain level in the 1850s, it was not produced on a large scale in America until the 1870s. The first cement was exported from Europe to America in 1868, and by 1885 exports had risen to 3 million barrels.

The first cement factory in the USA was established in 1871 by David O. Saylor. Saylor selected and mixed different formations from his own quarries, and in 1876 John K. Shinn produced Portland cement in Philadelphia.

In America, formations suitable for cement production were found in Rosendale, New York; in Indiana; in Kentucky; and in the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania. In 1874, Robert W. Lesley raised the idea that feeding the material into the kiln in the form of nodules would lower labour costs.

In 1880, 42 million barrels of cement were produced per year in the USA. In the following decade, the amount of production reached 335 million barrels. The most important factor driving the increase was developments in the rotary kiln. The vertical kilns that were built and then emptied and refilled after each production run gave way to rotary kilns, in which continuous production was possible.

In the 1890s, rotary kilns began to replace the original vertical shaft kilns used in lime making. In rotary kilns, heat transfer and heat treatment were carried out under more suitable conditions, and higher temperatures were reached.

In 1885, the English engineer Frederick Ransome patented the slightly inclined rotary kiln. In inclined rotary kilns, because the material inside moved toward the outlet with the rotation of the kiln, production capacities increased and a more homogeneous product was obtained. As a result, the vertical kilns that had been installed were replaced with the new inclined rotary kilns.

At the end of the 19th century, gypsum was added to the clinker, and ball mills began to be used in grinding.

In 1902, Thomas A. Edison built the longest kiln of the time, 45 metres long, at the New Jersey Portland Cement Works in the USA. In addition to the use of long kilns, cement plant capacities also increased in parallel with developments in crushers and grinding mills.

The first large engineering application of Portland cement was the tunnel built under the Thames River in 1928. A plant was established in Wakefield to produce the Portland cement to be used in this tunnel.

In summary, the name "Portland" comes from a type of building stone found around Portland in England that resembles Portland cement (Taylor 1992). Although it is not known when Portland cement was discovered, its patent was taken out by J. Aspdin in 1824. Although the properties of the Portland cement he produced were not as good as those of today's Portland cement, because heat treatment was not applied at a sufficient temperature, in the literature J. Aspdin must be regarded as the person who discovered cement.

In 1845, Isaac Johnson used the same raw materials that are used for the Portland cement in use today.

The regular production of Portland cement was carried out in England at Swanscombe in 1825 by James Frost. After this, the first cement factories were established in Belgium and Germany in 1855. In the United States, work on cement began in 1865, and Portland cement was first produced in 1871. Regular studies on the composition of Portland cement then began, and in 1906 the application of heat-treatment and production methods was placed on a scientific footing. In 1913, today's cement trucks were first used in Baltimore, Maryland.

From 1926 onward, numerous scientific studies were carried out on Portland cement in various countries, and the development of hydraulic cement continued.

In the 1900s, with the use of the rotary kiln for heat treatment, the use of ball mills for grinding raw materials and clinker, and the addition of other additives to the clinker — chiefly gypsum — significant improvements were achieved in cement quality and, over time, in the production process. As a result:

• in 1928, the Lepol system by Polysius,
• in 1930, the vertical roller mill,
• in 1932, the pre-kiln preheating cyclones,
• in 1937, the Fuller grate cooler,
• in 1950, mechanical classifiers,
• in 1960, the first kiln bypass system,
• in 1966, the precalcination system,
• in 1970, high-efficiency classifiers,
• and in 1973, calcination systems using tertiary air from the cooler began to be used in cement production.

In later years, the cement sector saw new developments aimed above all at reducing costs by using all the heat in the system.

Frequently Asked Questions

When did cement come to Turkey?

Cement came to Turkey toward the end of the 19th century.

When and where was the first cement factory established?

The world's first cement factory was established in England in 1824.

When was the first cement factory in Turkey established?

The first cement factory in Turkey was established in 1911 in Darıca (now Kocaeli).

Who invented concrete?

Concrete was developed in the ancient Roman period, and modern concrete was invented in the 18th century by the English engineer Joseph Aspdin.