Evaluation of suitability of garnetiferous biotite gneiss for M-sand production - A case study

Abstract

Natural sand are weathered and worn out particles of rocks and are of various grades or size depending on the accounting of wearing. The main natural and cheapest resource of sand is river. River sands are mined from river beds and sand mining has disastrous environmental consequences. Rivers in the southwest coast of India are under immense pressure due to various kinds of human activities among which indiscriminate extraction of construction grade sand is the most disastrous one. The situation is rather alarming in the rivers of Kerala. Indiscriminate of sand has depleted the natural resource and ravaged the rivers of the State. Since sand mining from river caused a lot of environmental issues, the Government has banned mining of the same. Thus, river sand is becoming a scarce commodity and hence exploring alternatives to it has become imminent. The artificial sand (M-sand) produced by proper machines can be a better substitute to river sand. Rock crushed to the required grain size distribution is termed as Manufactured sand (M-Sand). The most common rock in the quarries of Trivandrum is Garnetiferous Biotite gneiss (GBG), followed by Charnockite, Leptynite etc. In present investigation, suitability of the available GBG in Trivandrum area, to be used for m-sand production is verified. For this, a case study was done at Cheriyakonni quarry. The rocks were collected from ‘Metarock Pvt. Ltd.’ m-sand manufacturing plant which collects rock Cheriyakonni quarry, which is rich in GBG. The result of the study gives the best size and best proportion of GBG for m-sand production. © 2014 CAFET-INNOVA TECHNICAL SOCIETY.