Engineering and microstructure properties of contaminated marine sediments solidified by high content of incinerated sewage sludge ash

Management of incinerated sewage sludge ash(ISSA) and dredged contaminated marine sediments(CMSs) is a great challenge for Hong Kong and other coastal cities due to limited landfilling capacity.The present study investigates the use of high content(20% of sediment by mass) of ISSA in combination with cement/lime for solidification/stabilization(S/S) treatment of CMSs to provide a way to reuse the wastes as construction materials.The results showed that ISSA being a porous material was able to absorb a large amount of water rendering a more efficient solidification process of the marine sediment which normally had a very high water content(～80%).The S/S treatment improved the engineering properties of the sediment,but reduced the workability,especially for the lime-treated samples.Lime can be used to replace ordinary Portland cement(OPC) for better heavy metal immobilization and carbon emission reduction.The hardened sediment samples prepared with 10% of lime and 20% of ISSA could attain a strength of 1.6 MPa after 28 d of curing.In addition,leaching tests confirmed that there was no environmental risk induced by these stabilized materials.The formation of hydrated cementitious compounds including calcium silicate hydrate(C-S-H)/calcium aluminate silicate hydrate(C-A-S-H)/hydrocalumite/calcite was mainly responsible for the strength development in the ISSA/lime-treated sediments.