The decarbonization of the cement industry has intensified the search for sustainable supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs). Calcium carbide residue (CCR), a byproduct of acetylene production, is a promising candidate due to its high portlandite (Ca(OH) 2 ) content and the declining availability of conventional SCMs such as fly ash and ground granulated blast furnace slag. This paper synthesizes current evidence to categorize CCR-based systems into three distinct reaction regimes: hydration-controlled (CCR and Ordinary Portland Cement - OPC), pozzolanic-kinetically controlled (CCR and waste glass), and transport-controlled (carbonation curing). The synthesis reveals that CCR-OPC systems are limited by clinker dilution and flash setting to CCR partial replacement levels ≤ 10 wt%, beyond which mechanical and durability performance deteriorate significantly. Although CCR and waste glass (WG) are chemically complementary, their synergy system operates under a pozzolanic-kinetically controlled regime; the slow depolymerisation of the siloxane network in waste glass under ambient conditions restricts silicate release and C-S-H formation, with ambient-cured CCR-WG blends typically achieving strengths below 15 MPa, insufficient for structural applications requiring > 30 MPa. Carbonation curing offers a transformative pathway by directly converting portlandite into calcium carbonate (CaCO 3 ), enabling matrix densification. For CCR-OPC systems, carbonation, specifically through a three-stage hybrid curing protocol (pre-conditioning, carbonation, and subsequent hydration), can achieve structural-grade strengths of up to 45.10 MPa with a 15 wt% CCR partial replacement. Hybrid curing outperforms single-stage carbonation by temporally decoupling densification from the regeneration of the binding phase. However, this paper identifies a gap from existing studies: carbonation curing has not yet been investigated for CCR-WG blends. It is hypothesized that carbonation could bypass the slow dissolution kinetics of waste glass by providing an alternative transport-controlled densification pathway. The mechanistic evidence compiled here justifies a transition from purely chemical analysis to targeted experimental research in this area. The paper concludes that while carbonation curing is a promising route to enable high-volume waste glass utilization in structural applications, it remains a promising but unverified research hypothesis requiring experimental validation.
Zoum et al. (Sat,) studied this question.