Synchrotron Nano-Diffraction Study of Thermally Treated Asbestos Tremolite from Val d’Ala, Turin (Italy)

Nowadays, due to the adverse health effects associated with exposure to asbestos, its removal and thermal inertization has become one of the most promising ways for reducing waste risk management. Despite all the advances in structure analysis of fibers and characterization, some problems still remain that are very hard to solve. One challenge is the structure analysis of natural micro-and nano-crystalline samples, which do not form crystals large enough for single-crystal X-ray diffraction (SC-XRD), and their analysis is often hampered by reflection overlap and the coexistence of multiple fibres linked together. In this paper, we have used nano-focused synchrotron X-rays to refine the crystal structure of a micrometric tremolite fibres from Val d’Ala, Turin (Italy) after various heat treatment. The structure of the original fibre and after heating to 800◦C show minor differences, while the fibre that was heated at 1000◦C is recrystallized into pyroxene phases and cristobalite.