VALORISATION OF CEMENT PLANT AND THERMAL POWER PLANT WASTE FOR THE PROTECTION OF THE ENVIRONMENT

Mining activities produce huge amounts of surface-stored solid waste, which is responsible for the production of acid mine drainage (AMD) with fatal consequences for the environment. Currently, to solve this problem, new rehabilitation techniques are being studied, such as active and passive effluent treatment and alkaline amendment. The experimental site is the abandoned Kettara mine, located about 32 km northwest of the city of Marrakech. It contains more than 3 million tonnes of sulfurous residues stored directly on highly fractured soils. These solid residues (Tetting Kettara: TK) produce very acidic leachates with a pH ≤ 3 containing a large amount of heavy metals (As, Pb, Fe, Cr, Cu, Mn.). They are likely to contaminate the region's water resources. Several alkaline amendment protocols based on the CKD of the Lafarge (Bouskoura) and Fly Ash (FA) cement plants of the Jorf Lasfar thermal power plant (Eljadida) were carried out in the laboratory. Kinetic tests have proved he efficiency of the arrangement of these industrial byproducts as amendment and/or covering of the mining residues because the quality of leachate was improved. These tests revealed the effectiveness of the protocol combining the amendment and the residue cover by mixing 80% CKD and 20% AF to reduce acidic minning drainage in the Kettara site.