초록
When rivers and lakes are contaminated with numerous contaminants, usually the contaminants are finally deposited on the sediments of the waterbody. Many clean up technologies have been developed for the contaminated sediments. Among several technologies dredging is one of the best methods because dredging removes all the contaminated sediments from the water and the contaminated sediments can be completely treated with physical and chemical methods. However the most worried phenomenon is suspension of fine particles during the dredging process. The suspended particle can release contaminants into water and resulted in spread of the contaminants and the increase of risk due to the resuspension of the precipitated contaminants such as heavy metals and toxic organic compounds. Therefore the success of the dredging process depends on the prevention of resuspension of fine particles. Advanced dredging processes employ pumping the sediment with water onto a ship and release the turbid water pumped with sediment into waterbody after collection of sediment solids. Before release of the turbid water into lake or river, just a few minutes allowed to precipitate the suspended particle due to the limited area on a dredging ship. However the fine particle cannot be removed by the gravitational settling over a few minutes. Environmental technology such as coagulation and precipitation could be applied for the settling of fine particles. However, the process needs coagulants and big settling tanks. For the quick settling of the fine particles suspended during dredging process magnetic separation has been tested in current study. Magnetic force increased the settling velocity and the increased settling process can reduce the volume of settling tank usually located in a ship for dredging. The magnetic assisted settling also decreased the heavy metal release through the turbid water by precipitating highly contaminated particles with magnetic force.