Total phosphorus release from bottom sediments in flowing water

In this paper, the bottom of the Dianshan Lake was selected as a test sample. The dynamic release of contaminated sediments into the overlying water column was experimentally investigated in an open water channel under different hydrodynamic conditions. The experimental results indicate that the Total Phosphorus (TP) release process can be divided into three stages: rapid release, slow release and equilibration release. In the initial release stage the measured TP concentration changes along the depth. The TP concentration near the sediment-water interface is higher than that near the water surface, but the TP concentration becomes uniform along the depth after 3 h. The dynamic release of re-suspension sediment pollutants is about 6 times higher than the static release of sediment-water interface. There are three main types of release mechanism: diffusion release, re-suspended pore water mixing release and re-suspended particles desorbing release.