Ecological impacts of Al-Jalamid phosphate mining, Saudi Arabia: Soil elemental characterization and spatial distribution with INAA
Journal Article
Ashraf, El-Taher, A., García-Tenorio, R., Khater EM . 2016
المجلة \ الصحيفة:
Applied Radiation and Isotopes
رقم الإصدار السنوي:
107
الصفحات:
382-390
مستخلص المنشور:
Phosphate (P) industries will be one of the main industrial sectors in Saudi Arabia within the next few years. Al-Jalamid phosphate mine, which started operation a few years ago, is one of the biggest mining locations in the Middle East region.It is planned to mine12 million tons run of mine ore per year (Mty) and roduceabout4.5Mtyofphosphateconcentrateforthenext20years.Longtermecologicalimpacts of phosphate mining activities on soil and groundwater should be investigated.The contaminated soil acts as a long terms source of environmental contamination.Themainaimofthisworkwastoshedmore light on the elemental characterization and spatial distributions in soil areas located in the vicinity of the phosphate mining activities. Atotalofsixtyeightsurfaceandsubsurfacesoilsamplesfrom34locations around Al-Jalamid phosphate mine have been collected.Theelementalcharacterizationofsoilsamples was achieved using instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA).Pollutionindices,geo-accumulation (Igeo) and pollution load (PLI) indices were calculated from some elements to evaluate the soil pollution. Until now, there is no existing pre-operational elemental characterization in soil to evaluate the foreseen ecological impacts of phosphate mining.Ourresultsarethe first to evaluate the present situation that will be the base for the future evaluations.Themainaimofthisworkwastoshedmorelightonthe elemental characterization and spatial distributions in soil and the irrelation to phosphate mining activities, and to better understand the behavior of different elements in soil in an arid environment