TY - JOUR
T1 - Experimental and Numerical Analysis of a Field Trial Application of Microbially Induced Calcite Precipitation for Ground Stabilization
AU - Zeng, Chen
AU - Veenis, Yvo
AU - Hall, Caitlyn A.
AU - Young, Elizabeth Stallings
AU - Van Der Star, Wouter R.L.
AU - Zheng, Jun Jie
AU - Van Paassen, Leon A.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2016YFC0800200), the Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (Grant No. 5187081566), the Chinese Scholarship Council, the National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering Research Center program under Grant No. ERC-1449501, and Waterfront Toronto. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the NSF.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers.
PY - 2021/7/1
Y1 - 2021/7/1
N2 - A field trial evaluated the potential of microbially induced calcite precipitation (MICP) through urea hydrolysis for ground stabilization. A bioaugmentation approach was employed in which locally enriched bacteria were injected, followed by an amendment solution containing urea and calcium chloride. Results from cone penetration tests and soil analysis were inconclusive about the obtained ground stabilization. In situ monitoring results were analyzed using a two-dimensional (2D) numerical reactive transport model to evaluate the process performance, in which the effective thickness of the treated layers, the average reaction rate, and a dilution factor accounting for the water extracted from the less-permeable layers were varied, and the results of the different numerical simulations were compared with the field measurements. The combined results of monitoring and numerical modeling demonstrated that treatment was limited to approximately 5% of the total soil volume. The conversion efficiency was significantly lower than expected, and the substrates spread farther than originally intended, which could be attributed to the heterogeneous soil profile with a large amount of fines, causing preferential flow through the more-permeable layers and possibly hydraulically induced fractures.
AB - A field trial evaluated the potential of microbially induced calcite precipitation (MICP) through urea hydrolysis for ground stabilization. A bioaugmentation approach was employed in which locally enriched bacteria were injected, followed by an amendment solution containing urea and calcium chloride. Results from cone penetration tests and soil analysis were inconclusive about the obtained ground stabilization. In situ monitoring results were analyzed using a two-dimensional (2D) numerical reactive transport model to evaluate the process performance, in which the effective thickness of the treated layers, the average reaction rate, and a dilution factor accounting for the water extracted from the less-permeable layers were varied, and the results of the different numerical simulations were compared with the field measurements. The combined results of monitoring and numerical modeling demonstrated that treatment was limited to approximately 5% of the total soil volume. The conversion efficiency was significantly lower than expected, and the substrates spread farther than originally intended, which could be attributed to the heterogeneous soil profile with a large amount of fines, causing preferential flow through the more-permeable layers and possibly hydraulically induced fractures.
KW - Field-scale modeling
KW - Microbially induced calcite precipitation (MICP)
KW - Reactive transport model
KW - Slope stability
KW - Urea hydrolysis
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U2 - 10.1061/(ASCE)GT.1943-5606.0002545
DO - 10.1061/(ASCE)GT.1943-5606.0002545
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85105798996
SN - 1090-0241
VL - 147
JO - Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
JF - Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
IS - 7
M1 - 05021003
ER -