The Collaborative International Dictionary
Cementation \Cem`en*ta"tion\, n.
The act or process of cementing.
(Chem.) A process which consists in surrounding a solid body with the powder of other substances, and heating the whole to a degree not sufficient to cause fusion, the physical properties of the body being changed by chemical combination with powder; thus iron becomes steel by cementation with charcoal, and green glass becomes porcelain by cementation with sand.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1590s, from cement + -ation.
Wiktionary
n. 1 The act of cementing 2 (context metallurgy English) The impregnation of the surface of a metal with another material; the manufacture of steel by carburizing iron 3 (context geology English) The precipitation of mineral matter in the pores of a sediment 4 (context medicine English) The use of a cement join the parts of a broken bone to aid in the healing process 5 (context dentistry English) The use of a cement or adhesive to fasten orthodontics or to restore chipped or broken teeth
Wikipedia
Cementation may refer to:
- Cementation (biology), the process whereby some sessile bivalve mollusks (and some other shelled invertebrates) attach themselves permanently to a hard substrate
- Cementation (geology), the process of deposition of dissolved mineral components in the interstices of sediments
- Cementation (medical), a small deposit of calcium, similar to a cyst
- Cementation (metallurgy), a process in which ions are reduced to zero valence at a solid metallic interface
- Cementation process, an obsolete technique for making steel by carburization of iron
- Carburization, a process for surface hardening of low- carbon steel
Cementation involves ions carried in groundwater chemically precipitating to form new crystalline material between sedimentary grains. The new pore-filling minerals form "bridges" between original sediment grains, thereby binding them together. In this way sand becomes "sandstone", and gravel becomes "conglomerate" or "breccia". Cementation occurs as part of the diagenesis or lithification of sediments. Cementation occurs primarily below the water table regardless of sedimentary grain sizes present. Large volumes of pore water must pass through sediment pores for new mineral cements to crystallize and so millions of years are generally required to complete the cementation process. Common mineral cements include calcite, quartz or silica phases like cristobalite, iron oxides, and clay minerals, but other mineral cements also occur.
Cementation is continuous in the groundwater zone, so much so that the term "zone of cementation" is sometimes used interchangeably. Cementation occurs in fissures or other openings of existing rocks and is a dynamic process more or less in equilibrium with a dissolution or dissolving process.
Cement found on the sea floor is commonly aragonite and can take different textural forms. These textural forms include pendant cement, meniscus cement, isopachous cement, needle cement, botryoidal cement, blocky cement, syntaxial rim cement, and coarse mosaic cement. The environment in which each of the cements is found depends on the pore space available. Cements that are found in phreatic zones include: isopachous, blocky, and syntaxial rim cements. As for calcite cementation, which occurs in meteoric realms (freshwater sources), the cement is produced by the dissolution of less stable aragonite and high-Mg calcite. (Boggs, 2011)
Classifying rocks while using the Folk Scheme classification depends on the matrix, which is either sparry (prominently composed of cement) or micritic (prominently composed of mud).
Cementation is a type of precipitation, a heterogeneous process in which ions are reduced to zero valence at a solid metallic interface. The process is often used to refine leach solutions.
Cementation of copper is a common example. Copper ions in solution, often from an ore leaching process, are precipitated out of solution in the presence on solid iron. The iron oxidizes, and the copper ions are reduced through the transfer of electrons. The reaction is spontaneous because copper is higher on the galvanic series than iron.
Cu(aq) + Fe(s) → Cu(s) + Fe(aq)This was a historically useful process for the production of copper, where the precipitated solid copper metal was recovered as flakes or powder on the surface of scrap iron.
Cementation is used industrially to recover a variety of heavy metals including cadmium, and the cementation of gold by zinc in the Merrill-Crowe process accounts for a substantial fraction of world gold production.
Usage examples of "cementation".
Leon Gantz had only laid the foundations of biological cementation and deconstruction.
Such islands had initially had to be anchored to subsurface structures by mechanical holdfasts because Leon Gantz's techniques of biotech cementation hadn't been around in those days, but anyone who cared to employ gantzers on a sufficiently lavish scale could now make better provision.
The other was the man whose pioneering work in biotechnological cementation made it possible to build homes out of desert sand and exhausted soil that were literally dirt cheap, thus giving shelter to millions, but you probably think that the good he did was canceled out by the enormity of the fortune that flowed from the generations of patents generated and managed by his sons-my uncles.
The brothers agreed to make them but insisted on understanding the cementation process.
They were impressed by Ilya's axes and wanted to get into the cementation business themselves.
Also, your tools would doubtless be made hard by this cementation process of yours that we have been hearing about.
He insisted that charcoal was better than coke, especially for the cementation process of making steel, but that last took very little charcoal.
In the 1740s Benjamin Harrison (the inventor of the naval chronograph clock, but that is a separate story) developed a way to take the blister steel from the cementation process and melt it in a closed crucible with a special flux that grabbed up fine bits of slag to make a very pure crucible steel, but crucible steel is very very expensive.
Smiths in China mixed bundles of cast and wrought iron together and forged and heated them to diffuse them in a manner similar to the cementation process describe above.
It would, however, reduce the flow sufficiently to allow cementation crews to get in and plug the drive solid.
Already the crews from the cementation company were manhandling their equipment up towards the blocked drive.
It happened at a time when I was interested— and I had been two years previously occupied— in an attempt to convert cast-iron into steel, without fusion, by a process of cementation, which had for its object the dispersion or absorption of the superfluous carbon contained in the cast-iron,— an object which at that time appeared to me of so great importance, that, with the consent of a friend, I erected an assay and cementing Furnace at the distance of about two miles from the Clyde Works.
Cementation didn't change the shape of the iron bars I made into steel, and the old axe heads already looked like axe heads.