As part of Petrolab’s commitment to stay at the forefront of providing excellent geomaterials services, our Principal Geomaterials Scientist Bradley Staniforth participated in the Euroseminar on Microscopy Applied to Building Materials (EMABM) held this June in Copenhagen.
What was your key takeaway from the trip?
Bradley Staniforth: This being my first EMABM I have attended my real takeaway was the vast amount of contacts I made during the trip. It was such a pleasure meeting and putting faces to people with whom I have either corresponded with or have read work by previously. The sessions ranged from detailed presentations on cement clinker formation to the latest work summarising ASR/ACR and a session on new advancements in analysis techniques across both commercial labs and academia. I came away with some many new ideas to implement and contacts to work with. In addition, the visit to Pelcon’s laboratory on the outskirts of Copenhagen was really beneficial, being able to get hands on with how they have set up their sample preparation laboratory, getting to watch them cast some calclined clay mixes in their mixing facility and getting the opportunity to sit down with Mr. Laugesen himself at the petrographic microscope! Overall the event was an excellent experience and I look forward to continuing Petrolab’s presence at the 2028 EMABM in the Czech Republic.
Did you make any presentations?
Bradley Staniforth: Yes I gave two presentations the first was on “Petrographic characteristics and liberation metrics associated with crushed construction waste from defective residential dwellings“. This work highlighted important metrics and a new classification scheme I have designed to look at locking, composition, carbonation state and potential for further sulphide degradation associated with recycled concrete from defective homes. This work has been really key in helping us provide insight towards dealing with waste associated with defective concrete homes and ensuring that “bad” material already classified as defective is hopefully prevented from reentering the circular economy. The circular economy and effective reuse of secondary geomaterials to prevent (or at least reduce) the need for more primary extraction has been a real focus of mine of the last few years and has led to us working on lots of new and innovative projects like this one.
The second talk I gave was on “Semi-quantitative assessment of sulphide species and equivalent total sulphur content of concrete using Oxford Instruments AZtecFeature and BEX UNITY mapping“. This presented the substantial work we have done developing a new technique to rapidly assess sulphide composition and proportions using the SEM to meet the requirements of IS465 test suite C within a commercial time frame and with enough sample throughput to allow for us to keep up with demand. Overall, I have been working with other Petrolab staff on this technique for the last 3 years and it was an absolute pleasure to be out and about talking about our approach to this analysis. From the conference I got a lot of positive feedback about the work we have been doing and what I presented, prompting lots of useful conversations and new contacts.
What is Petrolab’s relationship to Pelcon?
Bradley Staniforth: Petrolab have worked with Pelcon for many years now, having purchased one of the early thin section machines over 10 years ago! With this machine having now completed somewhere in the region of 20,000 thin sections, we have recently purchased a second “updated model” machine from Pelcon. This will take over the bulk of our thin sectioning to allow the old machine a well-deserved full strip down and rebuild before we get both machines set up to increase our overall capacity. Really the Pelcon thin section machine has been a lynch-pin in Petrolab’s development, being able to have full control over our thin sectioning in house to push both quality and quantity within our work, particularly with relation to producing high quality concrete thin section on mass, which many other brands machines struggle with.
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