Attrition efficiency in the decontamination of stormwater sediments

The purpose of this research is to propose a laboratory method based on attrition and sieving for the treatment of runoff water sediments in the aim of developing a pilot unit. The attrition process serves to remove fine particles and pollutants from the surface of coarse stormwater sediment particles. in all cases, the efficiency of pollutant removal is dependent upon various parameters, including cutoff threshold, residence time, solid density, temperature and impeller speed. This article presents the optimization of these various parameters along with method efficiency; for this work, several sediments have been tested. The results indicate that an attrition scrubber may be effectively used to remediate contaminated sediment and that reuse is definitely possible. A model of the method will also be proposed to study the behavior of fine particles and pollutants. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.