Continuous Synthesis of Nanominerals in Supercritical Water.

The synthesis of minerals should play a crucial role in the development of new and advanced materials. Since 2016, a renewal of interest to enlarge the mineral synthesis towards industrial requirements has been observed, especially thanks to three main recent papers. The innovative process exposed combines a continuous process with the use of supercritical water.

Multi-analytical methodology to diagnose the environmental impact suffered by building materials in coastal areas.

This work is focused on the development of an innovative multi-analytical methodology to estimate the impact suffered by building materials in coastal environments. With the aim of improving the in situ spectroscopic assessment, which is often based on XRF and Raman spectrometers, diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform (DRIFT) spectroscopy was implemented in the diagnosis study. In this way, the additional benefits from DRIFT were compared to the usual in situ analyses of building materials, which often have interferences from fluorescence and reststrahlen effects.

Ultra-Fast Supercritical Hydrothermal Synthesis of Tobermorite under Thermodynamically Metastable Conditions.

Tobermorite is a fibrillar mineral of the family of calcium silicates. In spite of not being abundant in nature, its structure and properties are reasonably well known because of its interest in the construction industry. Currently, tobermorite is synthesized by hydrothermal methods at mild temperatures.