Dredging of the sand: a costly puzzle
CD2E coordinates the CEAMaS (Civil Engineering Applications of Marine Sediments) project launch which objective is to help make decisions regarding the management of sediments and their reuse in the civil engineering applications.
Pollution of the sediments
Sea sediments are depositions of fine particles of around 10-6 to 10-2m coming from the seas, rivers and even the air. They can be of natural origin (plant and animal debris) or anthropogenic (current human activities’ emissions relating to operation of seaports and industrial and agricultural liabilities). Their pollution is the consequence of these activities.
How to deal with it?
The sedimentation of particles in the water is particularly important in low current areas such as estuary ports, in which deposition can grow one meter in a year. It is therefore necessary to regularly dredge the sediments so as to avoid the recovering of the area and allow the circulation of boats. This sediments management is a major issue for ports regions because it has devastating ecological repercussions. The on-land storage is not a satisfactory solution in regards to the required space. It is costly to store in a landfill or to re-use. As well as it is a constraint to operate close to ports areas so as to have a lower environmental and economic cost of transport.
Solutions found
The CEAMaS project’s goal is to bring positive answers to this issue. It gathers 8 different partners from France, Ireland, the Netherlands and Belgium and will last until end of year 2015.
Cycleco was selected to make the Life Cycle Assessment of the scenarios of management and the reuse of sediments. The aim is to evaluate environmental impacts via the Life Cycle Assessment of the reuse of dredging sediments in various civil engineering applications. This involves the definition of an assessment method (specifying the study scope and the modeling method), the data collection from the project partners, the assessment of different scenarios’ impacts, their comparison and the validation of the results.
Many organizations are involved in the project: CD2E, BRGM, Ecole Centrale de Lille, Université de Lille 1, University College Cork (UCC), Cork Institute Technology (CIT), Technical University of Delft, Belgian Building Research Institute (BBRI-WTCB-CSTC).
Click here for the CEAMaS flyer.
For more information on the CEAMaS project, please go to: www.ceamas.eu