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Dr.

Liang Cheng

What is Biocementation?
Where to use biocement in Geotechnical
engineering?
Some key factors
Future perspectives

Stimulating natural process from sand to


sandstone
Within a very short time
Using microbially induced calcite precipitation
(MICP) process
For soil improvement

Producing CO2 (e.g. by respiration, hydrolysis,


etc.)
Increasing pH (e.g. by consuming CO2)
Acting as nucleation site in oversaturated solution
Stromatolites (layered domes of rock) formed by
microbially induced precipitation of CaCO3

Enzymatic catalysis of urea hydrolysis in presence of dissolved calcium


results in CaCO3 precipitation.
(2 )2 +

2+

+ 22

(2 )2 + 2

23 + 2 + 22

24+ + 3 ()

23 + 2
24+ + 32

Bacteria are grown in- or ex situ.


Reagents, nutrients and bacteria are transported through the
soil.
Bacteria cause an increase of dissolved carbonate.
In presence of dissolved calcium, carbonate minerals will
precipitate and form crystals.
The newly formed crystals change the micro-properties the soil.
Consequently the macro-properties of the soil are changed.

Road stabilisation

Erosion control

Dike stability

Liquefaction prevention

Cost-effective
Easy to operate
Predicable, reliable and reproducible outcomes

Cheap urease
resource

More effective
crystals

Uniformity

Saving cost of sterilisation


Saving cost of growth medium (milk power, lysed activated
sludge, etc.)
Using easily achievable ureolytic bacteria resources as inoculum
Opening a door for in-situ cultivation approach

(Cheng and Cord-Ruwisch 2013)

Flushing specific growth medium into soil


In-situ enriching indigenous ureolytic bacteria
Monitoring and testing the urease activity of the enrichment
Flushing cementation solution (CaCl2/Urea)
Repeated treatment until desired strength achieved
3

(b)

Urease activity (U/g sand)

2.5

day 0

day 1

day 3

day 5

day 7

day 9

1.5
1

0.5
0
0

Coarse sand

50
100
150
200
250
300
Distance from surface of sand column (mm)

Fine sand
Cheng et al. (2016) under review

Bacterial cells
Crystals

Bacterial spores
Bacterial cells
(a)

(b)

Cheng et al. (2016) under review

What factors can affect the effectiveness of crystal bonding?


Urease activity/Bacteria concentration
Cementation solution (CaCl2 and urea) concentration
Temperature
Saturation degree

Formation of effective crystals can reduce the demand for chemicals

Nucleation sites
Crystal growth vs Crystal nucleation
Crystal size

Cheng and Shahin (2016)

High amount

Low amount

High concentration of cementation solution induced randomly formed crystals


in the soil voids (Okwadha and Li 2010).
Lower concentration gives more homogeneous CaCO3 formation, leading to
higher strength (Al Qabany and Soga (2013) .
Artificial seawater (i.e.10 mM CaCl2) has been successfully used as
cementation solution (Cheng et al. 2014).

A greater number of injections was required to achieve the same amount of


CaCO3 crystals precipitation when lower cementation reagent used.

4oC

Nucleation rate
Crystal growth rate
Solubility
25oC

50oC

Cheng and Shahin (2016)

Cheng et al. (2013)

Cheng et al. (2013)

100 m3 large scale trial: UCS ranging from 0.5 MPa to 12 Mpa (Van
Paassen et al. 2010).
60 L 3-D small scale trial: local strength variation larger than 300%.
(Cheng and Cord-Ruwisch, 2014)
X-Horizontal Width (mm)
Tow-meter column trial: UCS ranging
from 3500 to 300 kPa (Cheng
and Cord-Ruwsich, 2014)
0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

450

MPa
Z-Vertical Depth (mm)

Sand column trial (cm): calcium carbonate with variation more than
40%) (Feng and Montoya (2015).
100

1.000
1.500
2.000

200

2.500
3.000
3.500

300

400

4.000

What factors cause the heterogeneous outcomes?


Non-uniform bacteria distribution
Non-uniform calcite precipitation

Heterogeneous flow pattern

How to improve the uniformity ?


Uniform urease activity distribution
Uniform calcite precipitation

What is bioslurry?
Urease active pre-formed calcite crystals

How to use bioslurry?


1, Mixing with soil

2, Flushing cementation solution

Cheng and Shahin (2016)

Advantages:
Uniform urease activity distribution
Reproducible outcomes
High retention of urease activity
Against low salinity water flushing
Uniform Calcite precipitation

Disadvantages:
Requiring pre-mixing
Disturbing soil
Re-introducing urease activity is not feasible (unless in-situ regrowth)

Two-phase injection method


Advantages
Avoid instant precipitation
Avoid instant bacterial flocculation

Avoid clogging
Disadvantages
Poor bacterial fixation
Unpredictable bacteria distribution

Non-uniform cementation

CS
BC

Newly developed One-Phase injection method: Creating a stable


mixture of bacterial culture and chemical reagents (CaCl2/urea)
Advantages
No rapid precipitation ~ 30 mins

No instant bacterial flocculation ~ 30 mins


Enough time for long distance penetration
Easy to operate (low pressure pumping, surface percolation, etc.)

Disadvantage
The mixture needs to be well controlled.

Uniformity
Strength
increases
withstrength
flushes
Urease activity
affects

UCS (kPa)

UCS
(kPa)
UCS(kPa)

4000
4000
1000
3500
3500
4Bottom
flushes section
3 flushes
3000
800
3000
2500
Top section
2500
600
2000
2000
1500
1500 400
1000
1000 200
500
500 0
0
0
1.25 U/mL 1.875 U/mL 3.75 U/mL 7.5 U/mL
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
Strainactivity
(%)
Urease
Strain (%)

Ureolytic bacteria vs Urease enzyme


Finding
alternatives
to urease
driven MICP
Ureolytic
bacteria
Urease enzyme
Carbonic
anhydrase,
denitrification,
phosphate,
Less urease
activity per
More urease
activity Lper
asparaginase,
etc.
calcite
calcite

Other
applications
than
Inhibited
by high other
Could
beground
used in high
improvement
concentration of
concentration of
cementation
solution
cementation
solution
Sustainable
and
green construction
materials
Can not treat
clay
Possible
Self-healing
construction
materials
Biocement
for wood protection
and treatment
Cheap
Expensive
Pollutants
Extensive removal
studies
Not fully understand
Nano materials (e.g. CdS (Zhu et al. 2016))

Bio-mineralization

Silicates, Cu, Fe,


Au deposits, etc.

Bio-calcification

Urease and
Urea

Ureolytic
bacteria

Nitrate, lactate,
CO2 gas, etc.

Urease enzyme

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