Geopolymer mortar: Metakaolin-based recipe for Cultural Heritage Application

Many papers have been written about geopolymers and their application, but only few of them report about the recipe to obtain suitable product for Cultural Heritage application. As regards to the production costs of geopolymers, we realized that these are not, now, comparable with those of cement Portland mortars, but the possibility of obtaining products for specific applications, makes the geopolymers suitable for specialist uses in the field of Cultural Heritage despite their cost. Starting from a simple metakaolin-based geopolymer we would try to find the right ingredients and proportion between them to obtain a simple white geopolymer mortar suitable for restoration and reintegration purposes with physical and chemical characteristics like the commercial restauration standard products. In order to determine the mechanical and chemical properties, we follow up the processes with standard analytical techniques such as XRD on solid precursor and compressive strength on the final products.