The sludges produced in the cutting and polishing of ornamental stones are residues with diverse chemical composition that depend on the composition of the stones, the cutting and polishing process, the processes involved in the recycling of water and sludges, among others. The characterization and classification of these resulting sludges have great importance, especially for the State of Espírito Santo, Brazil, which is an important producer of ornamental stones. In this work, the results of characterization and classification of developmental and polishing sludges were presented, according to the Brazilian standard NBR 10004/2004. All the sludge samples from the cutting and polishing equipment were classified as Class IIA. We observed that the identification of the residues according to the generation source allows the proposition of clean technologies usage, such as cutting equipment with diamond coated wires, that use a minimum of raw materials, and metal diamond coated pads, free of toxic material, thus contributing to improve the chemical characteristics of these sludges.
characterization; classification; industrial solid waste; ornamental stones processing sludge; NBR 10004/2004
