Abstract
Microbial-induced carbonate precipitation (MICP) has been explored for more than a decade as a promising soil improvement technique. However, it is still challenging to predict and control the growth rate and characteristics of precipitates, which directly affect the engineering performance of MICP-treated soils. In this study, we employ a microfluidics-based pore-scale model to observe the effect of bacterial density on the growth rate and characteristics of precipitates during MICP processes occurring at the sand particle scale. Results show that the precipitation rate of increases with bacterial density in the range between and . Bacterial density also affects both the size and number of crystals. A low bacterial density of produced crystals/mL with an average crystal volume of 8,000 , whereas a high bacterial density of resulted in more crystals (), but with a smaller average crystal volume of . The produced crystals were stable when the bacterial density was . When the bacterial density was 4–10 times higher, the crystals were first unstable and then transformed into more stable crystals. This suggests that bacterial density should be an important consideration in the design of MICP protocols.
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Data Availability Statement
All data, models, and code generated or used during the study appear in the published article.
Acknowledgments
Y.W. would like to acknowledge Cambridge Commonwealth, European and International Trust, and China Scholarship Council, which collectively funded this project. J.T.D. acknowledges the support of the Engineering Research Center Program of the National Science Foundation under NSF Cooperative Agreement No. EEC-1449501. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this manuscript are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. The authors would like to thank Dr. David Frost of the Georgia Institute of Technology for providing the soil cross-sectional image used to design the microfluidic chip. The authors would also like to thank Dr. Fedir Kiskin for proofreading this manuscript.
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© 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers.
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Received: Jul 1, 2020
Accepted: Jan 8, 2021
Published online: Apr 9, 2021
Published in print: Jun 1, 2021
Discussion open until: Sep 9, 2021
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