MAYO LOUTI SAND CHARACTERIZATION: IMPLICATIONS AS CORRECTIVE MATERIAL IN CEMENT PRODUCTION AND AS STANDARD SAND FOR TESTING COMPRESSIVE STRENGTH OF CEMENT

This study focuses on characterizing sand collected from Mayo Louti and to check on its potential as standard sand and its suitability as corrective material in clinker production. Fourteen samples from Mayo Louti, North region of Cameroon were examined for baseline geotechnical and eleven for geochemical properties. They were test for moisture content, bulk density, grain size analysis, chemical analysis and compressive strength. Standard sand is used for conducting the compressive strength test of hydraulic cement mortars. Aside from the fourteen samples, a grab sample was collected and prepared according to EN 196-1 standard to potentially serve as an alternative to imported CEN sand in testing compressive strength of cement. The European Norms (EN) recommends Committee for European Norms (CEN) standard sand. Meanwhile, the average silica content of the eleven analyzed samples was 82.7 %. In addition, the difference in compressive strength after 28 days between local and CEN sand, gives a result of 0.7 MPa with CEMII 32.5. It is therefore concluded that Mayo Louti is embedded with a good corrective material for clinker and could be potentially used as standard sand for testing compressive strength of cement in Central Africa since it needs little processing to bring it to same level like that of CEN standard sand