Effect analysis of biomineralization for solidifying desert sands

Abstract

The sand-dust weather has become an environmental hazard in the world. However, it is still a challenge to control sandstorms and decrease sand-dust weather. The biomineralization technology for solidifying desert sands has been developed as a novel method in recent years. In this study, the wind erosion tests and verification tests of the sand solidification system were conducted via a series of laboratory experiments. The effects of sand barriers, injecting volume and concentration of the biochemical solution in the sandstorm protection were studied. Moreover, a field test of 60,000 square metres was conducted in the solidification area on both sides of the Wuma Highway in the Tengri Desert. The biomineralization technique was used to solidify sand to prevent the wind from blowing quicksand onto the newly built highway and causing accidents. Results demonstrated that the biomineralization sand solidification method had a good solidification ==effect, improved the survival rate, and promoted the growth of plants in the desert. This innovative biomineralization technology is an environmentally responsible technology to control sandstorm disasters.

Keywords

Desertification / Urease / Solidification desert sand of biomineralization / Combined solidification desert sand

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Hengxing Wang: Writing - review & editing, Methodology, Investigation, Data curation. Xiaohao Sun: Methodology, Investigation. Linyu Wu: Methodology, Investigation. Guangcai Fan: Methodology, Investigation. Linchang Miao: Writing - original draft, Methodology, Investigation, Funding acquisition.

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. Xiaohao Sun is an early career editorial board member of Biogeotechnics, and was not involved in the editorial review or the decision to publish this article.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 52173248).

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