Sustainable Utilisation and Treatment of Dredged Marine Sediments

Research Project, 2021 – 2024

Large amounts of sediment are dredged all over the world to make waterways navigable, especially for harbours located in estuaries, and the need for dredging will increase over time with the increasing transport at sea.
Dredged sediments are often heavily polluted due to previous emissions from ships and boats that were protected with antifouling paint that contained highly toxic organotin compounds, as well as ongoing pollution from traffic and the urban environment. The aim and the scientific novelty and innovation for this project is to develop a sustainable treatment method for polluted dredged marine sediments, but also to assess innovative and sustainable methods for managing sediments and finding the best solutions, and finding the use of dredged sediments in the construction industry. The project is partly based on previous laboratory-scale research and is now focusing in a continuation on applications to solve the problems with the dredged sediments. The project conducts literature searches, inventories, laboratory experiments, life cycle assessment, and multi-criteria decision analysis. The results of the project contribute to smaller quantities of polluted sediments being deposited in the deep sea and landfills and contribute to achieving several national and international environmental and sustainability objectives. The project contributes to all dimensions of the concept of sustainable development and development of green technology and circular economy.