Introduction
The outstanding importance of limestone in industrial applications
results from the fact that it is dominantly composed
of the mineral calcite (Chatterjee 2009). One of the
key industrial applications of limestone is calcination for
lime production (Oates 1998). Based on the applied firing
temperature during calcination, the resulting lime can be
described as soft-burnt lime (also referred to as quicklime),
or dead-burnt lime. The former is produced when the
applied temperature is in the range (900–1,150 °C) whereas
the latter results from temperatures >1,150 °C
(Stanmore and Gilot 2005). Soft-burnt lime generally has
higher surface area and consequently is more reactive
when compared with the dead-burnt lime (Ar and Dogu
2001; Moropoluoua et al. 2001; Gheevarhese et al. 2002;
Kantiranis et al. 2003; Cheng and Specht 2006; Li et al.
2008; Serry et al. 2008a, b).