Use of iron mining tailings in rammed earth: a literature survey

Abstract

The Minas Gerais region is recognized as one of Brazil's largest iron ore extraction areas, the world's second-largest producer. During mineral extraction, tons of tailings are generated and stored in dams.In parallel, a challenge in the Civil Engineering and Architecture sector is presenting construction solutions with a lower environmental impact. Among these, rammed earth is a construction technique with great sustainable potential due to the possibility of lower embodied energy than conventional techniques. Because of this possibility of interaction, this paper proposes to analyze the potential use of iron ore tailings (IOT) as a physical stabilizer, acting as a granulometric corrector of rammed earth. No investigations were found regarding using RMF in rammed earth in civil construction. It was found that it is possible that the use of IOT may be viable for soil size correction in rammed earth or as a substitute for base material. This is due to the physical, chemical, and mineralogical characteristics of RMF being suitable for this technique, especially when sand, fine sand, or silt percentages are required.