Revisiting new cements and building materials in the current contexts

It is highly subjective to decipher which cement or a binding material is new, as this understanding is intimately linked with time, space and context of application. Whether the genre of Portland cements can still have some novelty in their derivatives or only other cement systems qualify to be new are issues for unending discourse. Interestingly, in the last two hundred years three generic families of cement have been invented – Portland, Calcium Aluminate and Calcium Sulfo-aluminate cements. Of these three, Portland types have by far surpassed the other two in terms of world production and commercial applications. Yet there is no end to finding newer derivatives in the Portland cements family, which have been dealt with in this article. The other two varieties have the potential of offering cements and binding materials for niche applications, which have as well been touched upon in this paper. Finally, altogether new binding materials that are being developed to meet the challenges of mitigating the problems of climate change due to carbon dioxide emission have been looked into. The more promising researches in this field have been included. However, for brevity, the novelties in the sphere of concrete as well as the non-hydraulic chemical systems have been kept outside the purview of this treatise.