Erosion resistance of treated dust soils based on the combined enzymatically induced carbonate precipitation and polyacrylic acid

Abstract

The majority of cities worldwide are grappling with the challenge of dust pollution. Recently, the application potential of enzymatically induced carbonate precipitation (EICP), a novel environmentally friendly method, for dust control has been convincingly demonstrated. However, the long-term durability of EICP treatment is consistently a significant concern, particularly in regions prone to recurrent erosion caused by rainfall. As a result, the erosion durability of the EICP-treated dust soils requires further investigation. To address this, Polyacrylic acid (PAA) was added to the cementation solution in this study as the combined PAA and EICP treatment for dust control. The results showed that the addition of PAA slightly affected urea degradation; however, the combined PAA and EICP treatment significantly improved surface strength from 300 kPa to 500 kPa, especially for the wind-erosion resistance compared with the EICP treatment alone. The surface strength of samples treated with the combined PAA and EICP still exhibited a decrease due to repeated rainfall erosion, along with a reduction in calcium carbonate (CaCO₃) contents. Nevertheless, the decreasing slopes of surface strength (k = 13.434, 14.002, or 14.186) in response to repeated rainfall for EICP-PAA-treated slopes were much smaller than those for EICP-treated samples (k = 14.271), as well as the decreasing slopes of CaCO₃ contents, which suggested the slopes with the combined treatment had significantly improved durability. By comparing the cementation effect and the influence of repeated rainfalls on treated dust samples, the EICP-PAA (50 g/L) treatment achieved better dust control effects. Overall, the combined treatment of EICP-PAA shows promising potential for effectively suppressing dust generation and enhancing erosion durability.

Keywords

Dust control / Enzymatically induced carbonate precipitation / Erosion durability / Polyacrylic acid / Crust layer

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Xiaohao Sun: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Supervision, Writing - review & editing. Linchang Miao: Funding acquisition, Supervision. Wenbo Shi: Investigation, Writing - review & editing. Linyu Wu: Investigation, Writing - review & editing. Junhao Yuan: Investigation, Writing - review & editing. Hengxing Wang: Investigation, Methodology, Writing - original draft. Junjie Wang: Investigation, Methodology.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors hereby declare that they possess no conflicts of interest. Xiaohao Sun is an early career editorial board member for Biogeotechnics and was not involved in the editorial review or the decision to publish this article.

Acknowledgments

The authors express their gratitude for the valuable comments provided by the reviewers. This study was supported by the University Grants Committee (UGC), The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (grant number P0043090), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number 51578147), the Science and Technology Department of Ningxia (grant number 2020BFG02014), and Transportation Department of Ningxia (grant number 202000173).

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