Strength and uniformity of EICP-treated sand under multi-factor coupling effects

Abstract

Enzyme-induced carbonate precipitation (EICP) is an environment-friendly method for improving soil mechanical properties. The extraction and application of plant crude urease reduces the treatment cost. However, in terms of the efficiency of calcium carbonate production and cementation, crude urease is considered inferior to pure urease or urease bacteria. In this paper, urease extracted from soybean was used to explore the effects of urease activity, treatment method, number of treatments (NTs), injection rate, and curing time on the unconfined compressive strength and calcium carbonate distribution characteristics of EICP-treated sand. The results showed that, compared with the pre-mixing method and the two-phase method, the one-phase method produced higher strength and a more uniform distribution of calcium carbonate. The cementation efficiency decreased with the increase of urease activity. The high-rate injection can improve the treatment effect of high-activity urease. Under the same cementation level, high strength and calcium carbonate cementation efficiency can be achieved by one-phase-low-activity EICP treatment.

Keywords

Urease-induced calcium carbonate precipitation (EICP) / Strength / Uniformity / Cementation level / Treatment method / Injection rate / Urease activity

Statements and Declarations

The authors have no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.

Acknowledgements

All authors thank the anonymous reviewers and the editor for the constructive comments on the earlier version of the manuscript. The work reported in this paper was financially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China, China (Grant No. 42177454), the Training Plan of Young Scholar in Colleges and Universities of Henan Province, China (Grant No. 2019GGJS041), Postgraduate Education Reform and Quality Improvement Project of Henan Province, China (Grant No. YJS2021JD13).

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