Ecological and environmental protection is indeed an important aspect of healthy societal development. The 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China has clearly pointed out that “We must establish and practice the concept that clear waters and lush mountains are mountains of gold and silver, and adhere to the basic state policy of conserving resources and protecting the environment.”[
1] In China’s industrial field, 85% of the raw materials come from mineral products in mining production. The demand for mineral resources is growing, and the huge mining industry has brought a lot of tailings and waste dust storage [
2]. Dolomite is a natural carbonate mineral with abundant reserves, accounting for about 1.7% of the total crust. It is widely used in the field of building materials and metallurgy, but high purity requirements for raw materials are necessary. For example, the MgO content of dolomite used in the metallurgical industry needs to be greater than 20%, and the SiO2 content cannot be greater than 3% [
3]. Dolomite ore that does not meet the demand is difficult to use in the building materials and metallurgy industry, and the perennial accumulation has become a kind of solid waste that needs to be solved urgently. Therefore, using marginal dolomite as raw materials not only avoids raw material competition with these industries but also can realize the effective use of waste natural resources.
Alkali activation is considered an effective means of treating solid waste and producing green cementing materials. The product formed is called alkali-activated materials(AAM) or geopolymer, which not only has the same or even better mechanical properties as Portland cement, but also the production conditions are more mild [
4,
5]. Compared with the production process of Portland cement (two grinding and one burning), AAM greatly reduce carbon dioxide emissions and energy consumption. At present, the precursor of AAM is usually amorphous aluminosilicate calcined at high temperature, such as metakaolin, fly ash and slag [
6,
7,
8,
9]. In particular, the research of bulk solid waste mainly fly ash and slag as the precursor of AAM has become a research hotspot at home and abroad, showing great development potential [
10,
11]. However, the researches on the cheap natural carbonate minerals with huge reserves and the wastes in the mining process as the precursors of AAM is still limited. In current relevant studies, dolomite (CaMg(CO
3)
2) is generally considered to lack the gellability because it does not contain the tetracomorate Al of active aluminosilicate precursors, and the research in the field of AAM is very limited [
12]. Although some scholars use dolomite as a raw material for the preparation of AAM, dolomite is often used only as an additive or replacement material for traditional aluminosilicate cementing materials. Yip et al. [
13] added 17-35 mm fine limestone and dolomite powder to metakaolin-based geopolymer, respectively, and found that when the addition of limestone or dolomite powder was 20% of the total weight, the compressive strength of geopolymer increased, although it would shrink within 90 days of curing time. But, when the replacement weight is more than 20% of the total weight, the compressive strength decreases due to the interference of the powder on the geopolymer gel network. Szybilski and Nocun-Wczelik [
14] found that the amount of cement hydration products increased with the increase of dolomite content in cement-based materials. This is due to the fine dolomite particles after crystallization and better water absorption. Mikhailova et al. [
15] showed that the mechanical properties of the composite cementing material could be improved when fine dolomite was added to cement with 20%~25% mass fraction. There are fewer studies on using dolomite as the precursor of alkali excitation materials. Aizat et al. [
16] studied the influence of different NaOH molar concentrations on the compressive strength of the dolomite base polymer and found that geopolymer obtained when NaOH is 20 M has the highest strength, but it is only 5 MPa, which is difficult to meet the application requirements in construction engineering. Yin Suhong [
17] has deeply explored the properties and mechanism of alkali-activated carbonate ore cement grouting materials, but the strength of the materials is only 1-4 MPa, which is mainly used for the reinforcement and seepage prevention of sandy soft strata and has not been applied in civil engineering structural materials.
Asphalt is a major concrete binding material and has become the preferred material for modern expressways due to its improved driving comfort, safety, and service life of highway pavement [
18]. Currently, asphalt is used in the form of hot asphalt, diluted asphalt, and emulsified asphalt. Compared to hot asphalt and diluted asphalt, emulsified asphalt can save 40% to 50% energy, improve construction conditions, reduce project costs by more than 20% to 30%, and effectively reduce excessive aging of asphalt caused by high temperature heating. It also reduces the amount of carcinogenic benzopyrazine that is released through volatilization [
19]. But the general emulsified asphalt composite has the technical problem of insufficient strength in the early stage. Combining it with AAM can not only improve the shortcomings of low toughness and high brittleness of AAM, but also effectively solve the problem of low early compressive strength of general emulsified asphalt composites by taking advantage of the characteristics of high strength and early strength of geopolymer [
20].
In this study, the abandoned dolomite dust from a quarry was used as the precursor of the consolidated phase (i.e., alkali-activated material). Emulsified asphalt was used as the toughening phase, while sodium hydroxide and sodium silicate were used as alkali-activated agents. The abandoned dolomite dust-emulsified asphalt composite material with excellent mechanical properties was prepared by compression molding. The effects of different alkali concentration and emulsified asphalt contents on the compressive strength and bending strength of the sample were investigated, and the different properties of the emulsified asphalt-silicate based AAM and the emulsified asphalt-dolomite based AAM were compared in order to provide a new idea for the preparation of AAM with high toughness.