Radiological, chemical and morphological characterizations of phosphate rock and phosphogypsum from phosphoric acid factories in SW Spain.

In this work, radiological, chemical, and also morphological characterization was performed in phosphate rock and phosphogypsum samples, in order to understand the behavior of toxic elements. Characterization was carried out using X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray fluorescence (XRF), gamma spectrometry and scanning electron microscopy with energy-dispersive X-ray analysis (SEM-EDX). Our results show that the phosphate rock was mainly composed of fluorapatite, calcite, perovskite, quartz, magnetite, pyrite and kaolinite, whereas phosphogypsum only exhibited dihydrated calcium sulfate.