Study of dependence between two types of most abundant natural clays in Bejaad province (Central Morocco) using a statistical approach

Abstract

This work proposes the studying of characterization analysis of two natural Moroccan clays (RC and GC) in the same location from Bejaad (Province of Khouribga, Morocco) and to know the relationship dependence between them. The values obtained during the determination of a few parameters (density, pH, conductivity, dry matter - moisture content, organic matter-mineral matter) show that the two materials RC and GC studied have the same physical-chemical properties. The all characterization of the two clays was carried out by XRD, XRF, FTIR, SEM/EDX and TGA. The results obtained show that the two materials have very irregular and microporous structures, a heterogeneity of the pore forms and they are contain a mixture of Kaolinite, Illite, Quartz, Calcite, and Dolomite, with the presence of Hematite only in clay RC. On the other hand, The statistical approach applied to determine the dependence relationship between the two clays was based on two tests: Student's t-test (Comparison of two means for physical-chemical parameters) and Pearson's test (contingency table for XRF analysis) in order to prove that the two materials studied are the same chemical and physical-chemical characteristics.