Cement is one of the most important materials for construction. Many kinds of hydraulic cements with various physical properties, including Portland cement, are produced by changing the composition of clinker minerals; therefore, it is important to control the chemical composition of cement products and interim products.
Since the fusion method can eliminate sample heterogeneity problems, such as grain size and mineralogical effects, it is possible to obtain high accuracy for cement samples and also to establish calibrations using a variety of materials. Therefore, X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometry by the fusion method has been the method of choice in cement production processes.

ASTM C114-18 covers chemical analysis of hydraulic cements. In this standard, mainly procedures of wet chemical analysis are described and XRF spectrometry is mentioned as an example of “Rapid Test Methods”. In practice, XRF spectrometry has been used for chemical composition analysis of cement owing to its simple sample preparation and high precision.

This application note demonstrates quantitative analysis for Portland cements by the fusion method according to ASTM C114-18 on Rigaku Simultix15, a multi-channel simultaneous wavelength dispersive XRF (WDXRF) spectrometer.