Abstract: With the development of society, huge muddy production with silt and sludge as representatives gets rather close to the municipal refuse. Moreover, muddy materials have very complex and diverse traits and pollutants inside, resulting in a critical issue that we should dispose and utilize them economically and safely. Although the compositions of the various muddy materials are different, they share many similar physical and chemical properties. The ways to treat these materials are also consistent, including quantity reduction such as dehydration, harmless treatment like pollutant stabilization, and reclamation such as reusing after pretreatment. Furthermore, some special properties of muddy materials can also be utilized to solve certain problems. For a long time, there had scientific research and processing technology with various kinds of muddy materials in all walks of life. However, problems arose such as disunion of concept and index, isolation between technology and methods that all affected the development of basic theory and techniques. To solve these problems, this paper proposes the establishment of disciplines direction — the muddy material science and technology. We review main types and problems, hot issues encountered during the treatment process as well as several typical researches in muddy materials. The problems of the treatment with mud are analyzed and summarized.

Key words: mud science, dredged sediments solidification, sludge dewatering, filter cake formation