Abstract: With the wide application of sediment dredging technology in treatment of polluted water bodies, the disposal of river sediment has become a major problem. The preparation of ceramsite by using dredging sediment is a new direction of sediment resource utilization. In this paper, ceramsite was prepared with sediment dredged from two different rivers as the main raw material. The effects of raw material ratio, steel slag ash content and marble powder content on the ceramsite performance were investigated by single factor experiments. Moreover, the optimal conditions for the preparation of sediment ceramsite were determined by L16 (44) orthogonal test. The results showed that the optimum preparation conditions were as follows: sintering temperature of 1000°C, sintering time of 5 min, preheating time of 10 min, marble powder addition of 16%. Under this condition, the phosphorus removal rate of the ceramsite products was 98.04%, the water absorption rate was 28.55%, the porosity of ceramsite was 48.43%, the bulk density was 0.70g/cm3, the compressive strength was 3.13 MPa, and the apparent density was 1.36g/cm3, which can meet the performance index requirements in CJ/T 299-2008 Artificial ceramsite filter material for water treatment, indicating the feasibility of preparing ceramsite by mixed sediment, and providing reference for the sediment resource utilization.