Physico-chemical characterization of sand dunes from El-oued region

Abstract

In recent years, the interest in raw materials has increaseddue to their physico chemical properties and also theiravailability. Sand of particular interest; it is widely used inindustry and nanotechnology [1]. The sand in its raw state isused in various fields: as building materials, th ermal energyreservoir medium, water filtering material and in bricks andceramic manufacture [2 4]. However, sandrepresents the most promising resource of quartz (silicondioxide) material compared to crystalline hard rocks. T oday, high purity quartz has bec ome a vital mineral, withits particular physicochemical properties being employed ina wide range of nanotechnologies such as glass fabrication,optics and microelectronics, semiconductors and telecommunications.Extracting quar tz from sand or extracting sili confrom quartz and determining its suitability for different industrial applications require knowledge of the physical and chemical properties of the quartz quartz. The objective of this study is to identify the minerals sand dunes from different regions of Eloued area and assess the presence of pure quartz in thesand dunes of th ese region s and determine some crystalstructural properties of sand components, by using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT IR), SEM/EDX andX ray diffraction (XRD).