this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2024
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white sugar makes concrete impossible to set
Could you add a link to anything about that? Not that I'm disbelieving, mostly I want to know how
From https://steemit.com/chemistry/@pinkspectre/sugar-sabotage
When you add water to dry concrete mix, it reacts with chemical components of the cement - calcium, silicon and aluminum oxides - to form a paste which thickens around the aggregate, binding it together as the mixture hardens. Without this hydration reaction, the concrete can't properly bind and remains soupy. Sugar molecules interfere with this process, possibly by preventing the particles in the cement from clumping. However, there may be a more chemistry-based explanation. Aluminum and calcium can react with sugar to form insoluble chemical complexes, meaning they cannot be readily dissolved in water
Apparently, refined white sugar works best, while lactose has only minor effects. Setting can be increasingly delayed by adding more sugar, up to 1% of the cement volume. After this, the concrete will not harden at all! I learned about this from a facebook-circulating antifa post, with the intent of getting activists to use sugar to sabotage a border wall
Companies building plants of this size are likely to have law enforcement or private security protecting the build operation. It would be illegal and dangerous to go anywhere near that site with white sugar while concrete trucks are turning.
You can edit your earlier comments, it's not necessary to reply to yourself
I do it out of courtesy when the follow-up comment is not strictly related, so that it can be folded away by readers