The growing demand for sustainable solutions in civil construction, particularly in tropical regions facing a shortage of natural aggregates, has encouraged the use of mining waste as an alternative raw material for the production of artificial aggregates (Cabral et al., 2008). This study investigates the mineralogical interactions between sandy and silty textured soils and a clayey mining sludge, subjected to calcination processes aimed at forming reactive phases.

The methodology involved the formulation of mixtures with varying proportions of clayey sludge, subjected to calcination at temperature ranges defined based on mineralogical and thermal analyses. The samples were characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), following established practices for assessing the reactivity of calcined clays (Pinheiro et al., 2023; Monteiro et al., 2004).

Preliminary results indicated the formation of potentially pozzolanic phases, such as amorphous aluminosilicates, at temperatures above 700 °C, corroborating literature findings on the influence of firing temperature on clay activation (da Silva et al., 2015). The microstructure observed via SEM showed good integration between the constituents of the mixtures after calcination, suggesting the feasibility of combining soils and mining residues for pavement applications.