Many canals of Porto Marghera industrial district and Venice lagoon have been contaminated with heavy metals, PCBs, PAHs and PCDD/F's. As a result, several million m3 sediments need to be dredged for final disposal, and eventually treated. Within the research project, SeRTech (Sediment Remediation Technologies), an innovative vitrification was developed and applied on lagoon sediments, which allows the transformation of contaminated sediments into a chemically durable glassy product with a low content of heavy metals by forming of a metal fraction that can easily be separated from glass. The glass-like product obtained have very low heavy metals concentration, and are reusable in construction (i.e. coating materials) and roadbeds (i.e. clean fill material) sectors.
