Joseph Davidovits Quotes

[W]e can interpret... two elements... of the industrial activities. First, we may suppose that there had been exhaustion in the Sinai mines. Some minerals are used to make artificial stones, and we have texts... that show... the Sinai mines were very heavily exploited, and afterwards, no longer. Or the manufacture or lime-ash generated an ecological disaster. This is the lime... in the reaction... [with] the () [in water] to... produce the caustic soda that will start the ic reaction.

The god Khnum is depicted... on his potter wheel... creating the body of the and his ka and his eternal soul by petrifying, by using clay. ...[H]e kneads humanity and the gods with clay and silt. ...[T]his is the Genesis that we are accustomed to read in the Bible, and it is also the type of Genesis that is depicted in the Quran. ...The ka is the soul in eternal stone.

reacts with lime and water to produce caustic soda, the main ingredient for alchemically making stone. An abundance of lime would have been available by calcining in simple hearths.

The Famine Stele is... a list... 1/3... dedicated to the lists of minerals that will be used to make the pyramid.

[W]e observe a dramatical stop of the technology. ...[T]he variation of the pyramids' volume with time... from the invention by Djoser to the Cheops pyramid, that is ...within 60 years, we have an increase in the volumes ...optimum by Cheops and Chephren, and then a dramatic plunge... of the volume ...by Mykerinos, and the others are ridiculously small. What happened?

When the Egyptian alchemists developed glassmaking during the New Kingdom, it was to carry on the old religious tradition of making synthetic stones.

[I]f they over exploited the palm trees in the production of the ashes... then they got into an ecological disaster because... [i]f there is no more palm trees, there is no more agriculture, and... the end of the pyramid construction. ...[T]his technology, even though it was a sacred one, was dangerous.

[W]e discover that for Cheops, for the builder of the most impressive monument of antiquity, its actual name is Knum Kufu: may the god Khnum protect Cheops. ...The pyramids must have been done within the technology associated with Khnum, which is agglomeration.

So we have the text, and the first one is the... renowned... Famine Stele at Sehel... engraved in 2000 BC... a copy of more ancient texts dating to the time of the pyramids. ...We have the Pharaoh , the builder of the first pyramid, that is worshiping the god Khnum.

What about the Cheops pyramid? ...We have the core, this is the mass, more than 2 million tons ...made of ...reagglomerated limestone. But ...in the ...inner ...it is made of granite ...carved stone. Why? Cheops... is Khnum Kufu... agglomerated stone. However, Pharaoh is the king of the two countries. ...[T]he pyramids must be the representation of Egypt,... which means ...the replication of agglomerated stone for the northern part ....and in the south, natural granite that is the carving technology. So we have agglomerated limestone for the core, and the King's chamber is made of split granite that is dressed [cut] ...not carved granite.

Geopolymers are revolutionary for the concrete industry. Any type of rock aggregate can be used, and concrete made with geopolymeric binder is practically indistinguishable from natural stone. ...This is unprecedented technology; no tremendous heat or pressure is required... Geopolymeric concrete sets rapidly at room temperatures to form synthetic stone, beautiful in appearance and abundant with unprecedented properties.

[L]ime is very important and it has been shown by [(1990) Professor D.D.] Klemm: "...in the VI. Dynasty lime disappears nearly within the mortars. May this be interpreted as a variation in the accessibility of fuel [of wood] and consequently of economic potential and crisis?" ...He was talking about the regular lime that is calcined from limestone in a kiln. ...[W]e have not found any remains of kilns... to manufacture the pyramids of Cheops and Chephren. We need... 150,000 tons of lime, which means that we should have found remains of kilns. We did not... which means that the technology was different. ...[I]t was the one of ashes that contains lime... The ecological disaster came from the over-exploitation of wood... proven by the fact that just after the Great Pyramids, one gets frescoes... describing famines...

Major efforts were dedicated to greenhouse CO2 mitigation with the development of low CO2 geopolymer cements. My research... started in 1990 at Penn-State University... The production of 1 tonne of kaolin based-geopolymeric cement generates 0.180 tonnes of CO2, from combustion carbon-fuel, compared with... Portland cement... six times less. Fly ash based-geopolymeric cement... up to nine times less than Portland...

In... 1983, with Joseph Sawyer as head of Lone Star's research laboratory... I started to develop early high-strength geopolymeric binders and cements based on based on both geopolymeric and hydraulic cement chemistries. Within one month Lone Star Industries Inc. formed the development company, PYRAMENT... exclusively dedicated to... this new class of cement. ...It was discovered that the addition of ground blast furnace slag, which is a latent hydraulic cementitious product, to the poly(sialate) type of geopolymer, accelerates the setting time and... improves compressive and flexural strength. The first Davidovits and Sawyer patent was filed in... 1984... The corresponding European patent... in 1985... and these... disclose our preliminary finding...of 1983. Geopolymer cements are acid-resistant cementitious materials with zeolitic properties that can be applied to long-term containment of hazardous and toxic wastes.

[I]n the... early stage of polymer chemistry the question was raised on the ability of Si to generate chains... analogous to the s. ... (1912) isolated the compound SiH₄, the chemical structure ...equivalent of (CH₄). ...F. S. Kipping published his results on the preparation of the ... group (also called siloxo) Si-O-Si ...from the condensation of two groups and formation of water ...The ...reaction yielded ...organic mineral polymers known as s. ...Very soon after this ...it became evident that the silicone bridge -Si-O-Si- had something in common with the ...structure of (Almeningen et. al., 1963).