APR 2022 Partial Report

UNISS carries out research for the environmental rehabilitation and landscape restoration of disused quarry sites with the reuse of waste materials (WP 7).

A preliminary screening of the sites of potential interest was carried out starting from the Regional Register of Quarry Sites, taken from the Regional Plan of Mining Activities (PRAE) of the Region of Sardinia, in order to define the KPI (Key Performance Indicator).

On the basis of the cadastral code corresponding to the selected quarries, the corresponding cartographic and orthophoto data reported in the PRAE were consulted. Considering that the data reported in the PRAE were updated in 2006, the orthophotos were compared with recent satellite images in order to verify the current status of the sites of potential interest, including the presence of waste.

At the end of this preliminary study, 18 quarry sites were identified. The total number of samples collected consists of 20 stone materials and 3 waste materials.

Part of the lithoid samples was crushed more and more until materials with a size of less than 0.5 millimeters were obtained. The resulting powders were again quartered.

One of these aliquots was wet micronised using a McCrone micromill with corundum elements; the resulting turbidity was dried overnight in a ventilated oven at 65 °C, recovering the powders for X-ray mineralogical analysis and thermoanalysis in progress in our laboratories. The second aliquot of each sample was sent to ActLabs in Canada for chemical analysis.