PROVIDES CONCRETE ALL OF THE BENEFITS GAINED FROM A HIGHLY EFFECTIVE CURING METHOD.
CURE SHIELD
CURE SHIELD
ALL THE BENEFITS OF A WET CURE WITH ADDED SURFACE PROTECTION
CURE SHIELD offers “wet” cure benefits, with far less labor, while providing greatly reduced permeability, greater hydration and density, and added chemical resistance.
CURE SHIELD effectively retards evaporation during the curing process, while maintaining a sustainable waterproofing and acid/solvent resistant barrier on the surface of the concrete.
Cure Shield is an excellent concrete curing agent, providing tested and proven results equal to water cured concrete.
Cure Shield is water based, environmentally safe, user friendly, odorless, non-toxic, and contains zero VOC. It significantly decreases concrete’s permeability, substantially increases abrasion resistance, protects against freeze-thaw damage, stops dusting, and stops acid/salt and other contaminant attacks and resulting damage.
THE PROCESS: Cure Shield provides special ingredients to the yet available capillary mix water waiting to participate in hydration’s reaction rates/processes, generating increased volumes of cement paste in a significantly shorter period of time, utilizing all of the remaining capillary water and leaving none to later evaporate thus leaving void spaces.
As a result of utilizing all remaining capillary mix water, the concrete’s capillary void spaces become more segmented and smaller than usual. This greatly diminishes porosity/permeability by causing further utilization of the still available mix water content.
CURE SHIELD greatly improves concrete's strength, surface hardness and impermeability, which translates to longer sustainable durability.
RECAP:
-
Significantly improves hydration and concrete density
-
Provides a permanent integral moisture barrier & surface protection
-
Reduces permeability by >90%.
-
Eliminates freeze-thaw damage.
-
Excellent acid /salt and solvent resistance.
-
Environmentally neutral and user friendly.
CONCRETE CURING ANALOGY
The curing of concrete is probably the most important step in the development of high quality concrete. The placement of an appropriate mix must be followed in a timely manner, by curing in a suitable environment during the early stages of strong initial hydration, generally as soon as is practical following the surface finish.
Curing is a term given the procedures used to promote optimum hydration of plastic, or semi-plastic Portland cement concrete, during its early development of strength. Curing normally consists of temperature control and moisture movement in or out of newly-placed concrete. The moisture movement ultimately affects the concrete’s strength, permeability, and durability.
The conventional accepted objective in concrete curing, is to retain as much of the original mix water inside newly-placed concrete. The more water retained, the longer the initial accelerated hydration process within the concrete mass. This increased hydration process subsequently produces larger volume of Calcium Silicate Hydrate (C-S-H) or hydration product, significantly improving finished concrete quality. This is especially true when mix water pockets or capillaries are filled to their fullest possible extent by products of hydration. However, in most concrete placement, jobsite active curing stops long before the maximum possible hydration has taken place.
The general consensus is that no practical curing method can perform as well as water ponding. However, water curing requires continual monitoring of curing progression. Curing time varies greatly, based on many factors such as temperature, humidity, degree of concrete protection, admixtures used and more. The net result of these variances makes water ponding labor intensive and costly.
HOW DOES CURE SHIELD QUALIFY AS A CURING MEDIUM?
The American Concrete Institute (ACI), states that conventional silicate solutions simply cannot act as a curing medium because they do not:
"... maintain moisture and temperature conditions in a freshly placed cementitious mixture to allow hydraulic cement hydration and (if applicable) pozzolanic reactions to occur so that the potential properties of the mixture may develop.“
They further state that conventional silicates could improve concrete durability if applied after proper curing.
On this point, both ACI and the manufacturers of conventional silicate solutions agree - silicate solutions "should not be applied on fresh concrete."
Since conventional silicate solutions are more viscous than the water filling the surface pore structure of fresh concrete, silicate solutions cannot "penetrate properly and will not chemically react as intended.
CURE SHIELD has been tested and compared to moisture cured samples, and demonstrate equal or superior performance on the following tests:
• Compressive Strength (7% Increase)
• Flexural Strength (15% Increase)
• Abrasion Loss (50% Reduction)
• Surface Dusting (31% Reduction)
• Water Permeability - Tested over 100-foot Head Pressure (89% reduction)
• Water Permeability - USACOE C48 @ 100-foot Head Pressure (0 Leakage)
• Water Permeability - DIN 1048 @ 72.9-psi Pressure (94% Reduction)
• Freeze-Thaw Resistance (85% Improvement)
Over the past two decades, CURE SHIELD has consistently demonstrated, through testing and field observations, that it achieves ACI's 308R-01 performance parameters for wet or visqueen cured concrete.
DRYCRETE CURE SHIELD
VERSUS H2S & OTHER ACIDS
CURE SHIELD eliminates, or at least significantly retard, hydrogen sulphide (H2S) and other acids precipitated deterioration of concrete.
CURE SHIELD permeates deep into the concrete's interior, and reacts with free alkali (not affecting bound alkali) and immediately transforms from a low solids solution to a 100% solids insoluble mass within the concrete's interior, occupying its accessible pore spaces. This chemical transformation produces a colloidal gel, not generating heat or internal pressure, providing increased density and additional bonding strength to the concrete.
CURE SHIELD produced colloidal gel mass is made up of distinct spherically-shaped particles which are made up of microscopic spine-shaped pore networks containing pores smaller than a molecule of free water (moisture). This permits the treated concrete to breathe as needed, but does not allow water or free moisture passage, except in greatly-diminished volume vapor form. Water / free moisture (including acids) present in concrete prior to a treatment, becomes chemically tied up in, and even participates in the formation of the colloidal gel mass rendering these liquids harmless to the concrete.
CURE SHIELD renders the cement paste significantly more acid resistant, and the colloidal gel barrier is created just beneath the surface porosity, where most of the concrete's free alkali normally lays. This prevents acid-producing agents entry into the concrete's interior from the treated surface.
CURE SHIELD is highly effective as a protective barrier in the preservation of concrete subjected to exposure to hydrogen sulphide gas or other acid-producing agents.