An alternative for Ordinary Portland cement (OPC) consumption is the production and integration of green cement. In other words, the clinker consumption has to be replaced with new low-carbon binders. A possible solution was introduced by the geopolymerisation technology. However, the alkaline activation of geopolymers offers the possibility of obtaining greener materials with high properties, superior to OPC, but due to the high price of sodium silicate, their industrial use is limited. In the past few years, a new activator has been discovered, namely phosphoric acid. This study approaches the obtaining of coal ash-based geopolymers activated with acid solution cured at room temperature. Accordingly, phosphoric acid, 85% by mass, was diluted in distilled water to obtain a corresponding activation solution for H3PO4/Al2O3 ratio of 1.0 and two types of geopolymers were ambient cured (22°C ±2°C). Moreover, to evaluate the geopolymerisation potential of this system (coal ash – phosphoric acid), SEM and EDS analysis was performed to investigate their morphologic characteristics.

In the last few years, cationic layered clays, including bentonites have been investigated as potential catalysts for SCR DeNOx systems. In this work, bentonite as the representative of layered clays was modified in order to obtain an alternative, low-cost NH3–SCR catalyst. Samples of raw clay were activated with HCl or HNO3, treated with C2H2O4 and subsequently pillared with alumina by the ion- exchange. Afterwards, the modified materials were impregnated with iron and copper. The obtained catalysts were characterized by XRD and FT-IR. SCR catalytic tests carried out over analyzed samples indicated the conversion of NO of approximately 90% for the most active sample. The type of acid used for modification and the type of active phase strongly influenced the catalytic properties of the analyzed materials.