Cleaning Water Bodies Using Geotextile Tubes: New Challenges and Opportunities

Geotextile tubes have been used in many projects to dewater dredged sediments from ponds, lakes, rivers, and ports to successfully achieve the desired dewatering rate, sediment retention, and effluent. A wide variety of performance tests are conducted to select the polymers and its dose and to estimate percentage solid content of the dewatered sediments and quality of the effluents. Despite many successes, the use of geotextile tube technology is still not widely adopted. Over the last twenty years, significant research has been done at Syracuse University in the broader area of geotextile tube dewatering with an aim to develop new and effective performance tests. This research explores and assesses the feasibility of using starch and natural fiber geotextiles and use of fibers in the slurry to increase strength of dredged sediments. The lab and field studies have been conducted using over fifty different types of sediments from water bodies and standard soils (fine sand, silt, clay, and organic soils), over fifteen types of woven and nonwoven synthetic and natural fiber geotextiles and thirty types of polyacrylamides and starches. Results of these studies have been published in numerous journal articles, conference proceeding papers and MS and PhD thesis and dissertations. In this paper, some of the highlights of the research conducted at Syracuse University are presented, with a hope that it will challenge others to use this technology for cleaning and maintaining water bodies, small or large, worldwide.