Cleaner Engineering and Technology (Oct 2021)
Established soil science methods can benefit the construction industry when determining gypsum content
Abstract
We reviewed the treatment of gypsum and related calcium sulfates in a variety of scientific articles, most of which are about construction materials and their recycling. We checked if the substances involved in the reviewed articles had their gypsum content determined, and we depicted how these determinations were recently addressed in soil science. The corollary is that the easy and reliable analytical methods developed in soil science for gypsum content are overlooked in industrial studies. We suggest that the methods from soil science would work for many construction materials namely those with earthy or loose consistence and with heterogeneous composition, such as is the case for debris or rubble needing an assessment of gypsum content for their re-use, recycling, or disposal. The simple, robust proposed methods developed in soil science will reduce the isolation of the disciplines, an effect of the atomization of science in increasingly narrower sub-disciplines.
