Review of carbon capture and conversion with reactive magnesia cement materials

Abstract

The high carbon emissions associated with the cement industry underscore the urgent need for low-carbon alternative materials. Compared with other alternatives, Reactive Magnesia Cement (RMC) offers the potential to absorb CO₂. However, current research on RMC remains fragmented, lacking a systematic overview of its complete processing route. This review summarizes the carbonation mechanism of RMC and provides a comprehensive discussion of evaluation methods for its carbonation degree. In addition, the review provides an in-depth analysis of factors influencing carbonation and strategies to enhance it. Specifically, we categorize the mechanisms and evaluate the effectiveness of various methods, with an emphasis on environmentally friendly production processes to identify the most optimal approaches. Finally, the study highlights the carbon footprint of RMC and discusses the challenges associated with achieving low-carbon RMC production.

Keywords

Reactive magnesia cement / Carbonation / Influencing factors / Improvement solution / Environmental impact

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Yisong Liu: Writing - original draft, Investigation, Conceptualization. Linglin Xu: Writing - review & editing, Investigation, Data curation, Conceptualization. Zhiyuan Zhang: Writing - review & editing, Investigation, Conceptualization. Changzai Ren: Writing - review & editing, Validation, Conceptualization. Dandan Sun: Validation, Investigation. Yi Bao: Writing - review & editing, Conceptualization. Kai Wu: Writing - review & editing, Writing - original draft, Supervision, Investigation, Conceptualization.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare the following personal relationships which may be considered as competing interests: Dandan Sun is currently employed by China Railway 15th Bureau Group Corporation Limited. Other authors declare that there are no competing interests.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (2024YFF0510400), National Natural Science Foundation of China (52278270, 52378255), Shanghai Municipal Education Commission, and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities. Additionally, thanks are extended to the Experimental Center of Materials Science and Engineering in Tongji University, as well as the anonymous reviewers whose suggestions improved this manuscript.

Appendix A. Supplementary data

Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gerr.2025.100154.

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