Influence of particle size distribution on biocarbonation method produced microbial restoration mortar for conservation of sandstone cultural relics

Abstract

Biocarbonation of reactive magnesia based on microbially induced carbonate precipitation (MICP) process is a sustainable geotechnical reinforcement technology for strength development and permeability reduction. This method can be used to produce microbial restoration mortar (MRM) for the application of stone cultural relics restoration. In this paper, the influence of particle size distribution on the strength and porosity of MRM was examined. By mixing fine and coarse sandstone powder in various proportions, nine different particle size distributions were obtained to investigate the restoration performance, including the unconfined compressive strength (UCS), porosity, and color difference. The results indicate that the well-graded particle size distribution can lead to the UCS improvement and porosity reduction of MRM. The findings also imply that adding fine sandstone powder to the coarse sandstone powder can provide extra bridging contacts within the soil matrix. These bridging contacts can be easily connected by the precipitated hydrated magnesium carbonates (HMCs) minerals, consequently resulting in more effective bonding and filling within the pore matrix. The microstructural images of MRM confirm the formation of HMCs, which exhibited a dense network structure, filling out the gap and bonding the sandstone powders. Furthermore, the microbial restoration mortar showed a high weather resistance to dry-wet cycles, acid rain, and salt attack, which is attributed to better stability and strength of HMCs than the original calcic cemented minerals in sandstone.

Keywords

Biocarbonation / Cultural relics / Microbially induced carbonate precipitation (MICP) / Particle size distribution / Restoration / Sandstone

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Shaokang Han: Data curation, Formal analysis, Validation, Writing - original draft. Hanlong Liu: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Project administration, Supervision, Validation, Writing - review & editing. Huili Chen: Conceptualization, Data curation, Resources, Validation. Siwei Jiang: Formal analysis, Methodology, Visualization. Yang Yang: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing.

Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. Hanlong Liu is the editor-in-chief for Biogeotechnics and was not involved in the editorial review or the decision to publish this article.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge that the study reported in this paper was financially supported by Chongqing Research Institute Performance Incentive and Guidance Project (Grant No. cstc2021jxjl00028), Entrepreneurship and Innovation Support for Overseas Student, Chongqing, China (Grant No. CX2022007), and Chongqing Municipal Special Project for Technological Innovation and Development Application (Grant No. JG2021072).

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