It is also important to assess the long-term stability of salt-saturated Portland cement-based grouts to be used in engineering structures exposed to seawater or concentrated brine as it is the case for radioactive waste disposal in deep salt formations.

Another reason to study AFm phases and the Friedel's salt system is their tendency to bind, trap and to immobilise toxic anions, such as B(OH)−4, SeO2−3, and SeO2−4, or the long-lived radionuclide 129I−, in cementitious materials.

Their characterization is important to conceive anion getters and to assess the retention capacity of cementitious buffer and concrete barriers used for radioactive waste disposal.

Only detailed and well controlled chloride sorption, or anion exchange, experiments with a complete analysis of all the dissolved species present in aqueous solution (also including OH–, Na+ and Ca2+ ions) can decipher the system.

Friedel's salt discovery is relatively difficult to trace back from the recent literature, simply because it is an ancient finding of a poorly known and non-natural product.