Within the framework of the European project INTERREG NWE-REGENERATIS geophysical investigations are carried out on the DUFERCO Wallonia pilot site of La Louvière. The objective of this project is to determine the potential of former industrial sites to valorize the materials resulting from their metallurgical activity and present in their soil.
These geophysical surveys will be used to feed a tool based on artificial intelligence - the SMARTIX, which will make it possible to choose the most appropriate way of recovering the soils and materials found there.
The exploitation of the La Louvière site by DUFERCO began at the turn of the 2000s and ended in 2013. This industrial site was one of the largest in Wallonia. Today, DUFERCO Wallonia is in the process of dismantling its installations. At the time of its exploitation, which began in the 1850s and reached its peak in the 1960s, the site of La Louvière covered the whole metallurgical cycle, its soil is therefore rich in recoverable iron and steel residues. This is why it was chosen as a pilot site for the European NWE-REGENERATIS project.