Methods for Calcium Carbonate Content Measurement of Biocemented Soils
Publication: Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Volume 29, Issue 11
Abstract
Recently, a new soil improvement method to use a microbially induced calcium carbonate precipitation (MICP) process to generate biocementation in sand has been developed. In this method, the properties of biocemented soil are controlled by the calcium carbonate content produced through the MICP process. Various methods have been used in the literature to determine the calcium carbonate content in soil. However, the calcium carbonate content determination can be affected by the methods used and this effect has not been studied so far. In this paper, six different methods that can be adopted to measure the calcium carbonate content are examined experimentally: the titration, inductively coupled plasma (ICP), X-ray diffraction (XRD) TOPAS, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), ASTM, and washing methods. The titration and ICP methods give the lowest value and the washing method the highest value. The other three methods, XRD TOPAS, TGA, and ASTM, produce values in between and the differences among the values measured by those three methods are small.
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Acknowledgments
This study forms part of a collaboration between Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and Kyungpook National University, Korea. We would like to acknowledge that this study is supported by the project “Biogrouting for Underground Construction” (Grant No. SUL2013-1) from the Ministry of National Development Research Fund on Sustainable Urban Living, Singapore. It is also partially supported by a grant (17RDRP-B076268-04) from the R&D Program funded by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport of the Korean government.
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Published In
Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Volume 29 • Issue 11 • November 2017
Copyright
©2017 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Sep 18, 2016
Accepted: May 2, 2017
Published online: Aug 10, 2017
Published in print: Nov 1, 2017
Discussion open until: Jan 10, 2018
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