| Abstract Scope |
High-temperature slag engineering offers a pathway to enhance slag reactivity for use as a supplementary cementitious material (SCM). Conventional strategies aim to replicate ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS) through high temperature additions, FeOx reduction, and quenching, targeting Ca-rich chemistries with low Fe contents. However, such approaches are often impractical, requiring excessive additives and costly processing. A more effective strategy is to prioritise reactivity over predefined chemistries, identifying compositions that achieve high SCM performance while respecting metallurgical constraints.This broader design space modifies slags to exhibit pozzolanic or latent hydraulic behaviour, and includes lower-Ca formulations. Demonstrating this approach, this work combines computational pre-screening (liquidus temperature and R³ reactivity) with experimental validation, followed by multi-objective optimisation with respect to cost and CO₂-equivalent.The resulting Fe-rich slags exhibit superior compressive strength at 7 and 28 days, surpassing GGBFS and the reference cement, thereby redefining what slag valorisation can be. |