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 for water supplying and drainage is the managing of deposited sediments, which must be periodically removed. Deposited sediments, if containing anthropogenic pollutants with a concentration exceeding specific law limits, must be stored as industrial wastes, thus raising additional economic and logistic problems to deal with. Our research considers polluted sediments from an area close to the south side of Po river, in order to characterize heavy metals associated with different mineral species, thus defining effective treatments for their inertization, and suggesting a possible process for their recycle. Our results demonstrate that the composition of these sediments is suitable for the production of tiles and bricks. Several tests were thus performed to optimize sample treatment and other process parameters, finally giving very encouraging results. Releasing tests on fired products reveal that all the heavy metals are well retained.