Suitability of Gypsum from Fatha Formation for Production of Building Materials in Bazian -Takiya area, North-East Iraq

Abstract

Gypsum products are one of the most widely used materials in the industry. The wide use of gypsum as a building material over a very long period of time. A number of manufacturers introduce different professional quarries, but their physical and chemical properties were still questionable. Five gypsum samples were taken for chemical and physical analysis. Chemical analysis shows that gypsum are of high purity, more than 95.25% with varying amount of impurities; SiO2 (1.49-1.87) %, Na2O (0.17-1.00) %, MgO (0.03-0.13) % Al2O3 (0.06-0.23) % and Fe2O3 (0.05-0.09) %, .This can be used for Plaster of Paris without any purification of gypsum. The (SO3 and CaO) % shows that all studied samples are suitable for gypsum production as the final coating and building gypsum. The physical analysis shows that the colors of gypsum samples are suitable for building, Plaster of Paris, final coating and Juss according to the color chart of minerals and to Iraqi standard specification. The fineness percentage is less than 8%. Thus the specifications of all samples are agreements to standard specifications for building gypsums. In terms of setting time, the sample 1 and 2 are suitable for building gypsum and plaster of Paris and classified as Borax. However, samples 3, 4, and 5 are suitable for anhydrous calcined gypsum – final coat and classified as Knee cement. Moreover, the setting time for all the samples increased with the increase of the water powder ratio.