Blast furnace slag can effectively remediate coastal marine sediments affected by organic enrichment

There is an urgent need to control nutrient release fluxes from organically-enriched sediments into overlying waters to alleviate the effects of eutrophication. This study aims to characterize blast furnace slag (BFS) and evaluate its remediation performance on organically-enriched sediments in terms of suppressing nutrient fluxes and reducing acid volatile sulfide. BFS was mainly composed of inorganic substances such as CaO, SiO2, Al2O3 and MgO in amorphous crystal phase. Container experiments showed that the phosphate concentration in the overlying water, its releasing flux from sediment and AVS of the sediment decreased by 17–23%, 39% and 16% compared to the control without BFS, respectively. The loss on ignition was significantly decreased by 3.6–11% compared to the control. Thus, the application of BFS to organically-enriched sediment has a suppressive role on organic matter, AVS concentration and phosphate releasing flux from sediments and therefore, is a good candidate as an effective environmental remediation agent.