Quantification of fly ash in cements and mortars by means of gamma spectrometry

Abstract A method is proposed here to quantify fly ash in cements and mortars using high resolution gamma spectrometry assuming provided the source of the fly ash is known. The method was tested for nine samples of Portland 450 cement and fly ash from coal thermal power stations in Andorra (Teruel), Cercs (Barcelona) and Alcudia (Mallorca) which correspond to the low, high and very high calcium content types, respectively. In addition, two samples of fly ash from Cercs, standardized sand and Portland 450 cement were also analysed. The specific activity in Bq/Kg of two isotopes of the decay series of 238 U ( 214 Pb and 214 Bi), another of the decay series of 232 Th ( 228 Ac), in addition to 40 K was used for the quantification.