The potential of unperforated cenosphere as an internal curing agent in fly ash-cement mortar

This study investigates the performance of unperforated cenosphere (CS) as internal curing (IC) agent without removing the glass-crystalline film from the CS surface. In this study, fly ash-based cement mortars were prepared by incorporating 0-20% CS as cement replacement. To evaluate the efficiency of CS as an IC agent, various properties of CS and CS-incorporated mortars were studied. These properties include mercury intrusion porosimetry, absorption/desorption capacity, compressive strength, microstructural analysis, and X-ray diffraction analysis. The results revealed that unperforated CS can also be used as an IC agent without further processing (i.e., removal of the glass-crystalline film).