Industrial assessment of carbonate rocks using geochemical test: Bekhme Formation of Iraqi Kurdistan Region
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Industrial assessment of carbonate rocks using geochemical test: Bekhme Formation of Iraqi Kurdistan Region Ala A. Ghafur1 · Varoujan K. Sissakian1 · Aram M. Bapir1 Accepted: 12 October 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Korek Mountain is one of the outstanding mountains in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region; located north of Erbil city. It faces the entrance of the famous Galley Ali Beg gorge with its beautiful waterfall. The exposed rocks at the entrance of the gorge belong to the Bekhme Formation which consists of many types of carbonate rocks with a total thickness of around 100 m. The current study is concerned with the industrial assessment of the exposed carbonate rocks in the Bekhme Formation and to indicate the most relevant industrial uses of the exposed rocks. To perform the industrial assessment, samples were collected from the exposed rocks. The first sample was collected from the bottom of the Bekhme Formation within the Korek anticline and the last one was collected from the top of the formation; at systematic intervals. The collected samples were dried, crushed and ground to powder and were subjected to a XRF test. Upon receiving the chemical composition of the analyzed rocks, it was found that the rocks are very suitable for cement production and could be used in other industries such as paper, paint and sugar with little modification. Accordingly, the weighted averages were calculated to estimate the geological reserve in the studied site. Keywords Bekhme Formation · Cement industry · Geological reserve · Carbonate rocks
Introduction The Bekhme Formation (Upper Cretaceous) is one of the widest spread formations in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region. However, it is not exposed at east of the Lesser Zab River (Sissakian and Fouad 2014). The formation consists of carbonate rocks; limestone and dolomite (dolostone) with different proportions (Sissakian and Saeed 2012). Due to extensive facies changes and dolomitization as a diagenetic process, the percentage of limestone to dolostone is not constant and it is not easy to indicate a constant ratio for such large areas. Both limestone and dolomite are very common industrial rocks and are used in different industries. The
* Ala A. Ghafur [email protected] Varoujan K. Sissakian [email protected] Aram M. Bapir [email protected] 1
University of Kurdistan-Hewler, Erbil, KRG, Iraq
main uses are summarized by Al-Bassam and Al-Khafaj (2012) and are assigned in Table 1. The study area is located in the Korek Mountain (anticline) located approximately 80 km north east of Erbil city, between Khalifan and Soran towns, at the entrance of Galley Ali Beg gorge (Fig. 1). The sampled section is marked by the following coordinates with elevation of 663 m (a.s.l.): N 36° 37′ 6.46″ E 44° 25′ 0.84″ and N 36° 37′ 1.1″ E 44° 25′ 0.2″ with an elevation of 669 m (a.s.l.). The main aim of this research is to evaluate the carbonate rocks of the Bekhme Formation for possible industrial useage with special attention pa
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