『Abstract
The deterioration of buildings and monuments by gypsum is the
result of crystallization cycles of this salt. Although gypsum
can dehydrate to a hemihydrate, the mineral bassanite, and to
an anhydrate, the mineral anhydrite, this reaction occurs in nature
on a geological time scale and therefore it is unlikely to occur
when gypsum is found on and in building materials. The CaSO4-H2O system appears deceptively
simple, however there are still discrepancies between the experimental
and thermodynamically calculated data. The reason for the latter
can be attributed to the slow crystallization kinetics of anhydrite.
Apart from this, the large numbers of studies carried out on this
system have focused on industrially important metastable phases,
such as the hemihydrate and soluble anhydrite. The paper presents
a review of the studies dealing with the phase equilibria of the
CaSO4-H2O system as
well as the influence of other salts on the solubility of gypsum.
It tries to glean out the relevant information that will serve
to explain the deterioration observed on building materials by
the crystallization of gypsum and thus allows developing improved
conservation methods.
Keywords: Gypsum; Solubility; Deterioration action; Phases; Crystallization
kinetics』
Introduction
Background information
Geological background
Mineralogy
Industrial phases
Phase equilibria: a chronological review
The CaSO4-H2O phase
diagram and the gypsum-anhydrite equilibrium
Solubilities of gypsum and anhydrite in the presence of other
salts
Gypsum in the deterioration of monuments
Crystallization of gypsum
Deterioration mechanism for gypsum crystallization
Conclusions
Acknowledgments
References