Heavy metals in sediments from canals for water supplying and drainage: mobilization and control strategies

One of the most critical aspects of the maintenance of canals forwater supplying and drainage is the managingof deposited sediments, which must be periodically removed. Deposited sediments, if containinganthropogenic pollutants with a concentration exceeding specific law limits, must be stored as industrialwastes, thus raising additional economic and logistic problems to deal with. Our research considers pollutedsediments from an area close to the south side of Po river, in order to characterize heavy metalsassociated with different mineral species, thus defining effective treatments for their inertization, andsuggesting a possible process for their recycle. Our results demonstrate that the composition of thesesediments is suitable for the production of tiles and bricks. Several testswere thus performed to optimizesample treatment and other process parameters, finally giving very encouraging results. Releasing testson fired products reveal that all the heavy metals are well retained.