Comparison of the efficiency of traditional MICP and two-step MICP method for immobilizing heavy metals in aquatic environments

Abstract

The application of the microbially induced carbonate precipitation (MICP) method for remediating heavy metals (i.e., HMs) has recently garnered significant attention. Nevertheless, the inhibition of urease activity by toxic Cd²⁺, Pb²⁺, Zn²⁺, and Cu²⁺ poses a challenge for MICP-based remediation of HMs contamination. This study: (1) first performed the traditional MICP tests (in which the bacterial solution, urea solution, and HMs were mixed simultaneously), and investigated the toxic effect of HMs on the urease activity and the immobilization efficiency, (2) analyzed the toxicity and immobilization mechanism during the MICP process by combining the simulation and XRD tests, (3) conducted the two-step MICP tests (which initially mixed the bacterial solution and urea solution to promote urea hydrolysis, then added the HMs solutions for HMs precipitation) to improve the immobilization efficiency. The tube experiments and simulations were investigated in the HMs concentration range from 1 to 10 mmol/L. Indicators including ammonium concentration, HMs concentrations, and pH were measured/recorded during the tests. The results show that soluble HMs exhibit a concentration-dependent inhibition of urea hydrolysis during the traditional MICP process, resulting in a decreasing immobilization efficiency. The two-step MICP method can effectively immobilize almost the Cd²⁺ and Zn²⁺ when the initial urea hydrolysis period exceeds 1-2 h. In addition, a high immobilization rate of over 90% can be achieved for Cu-contaminated solutions at the optimal first-step reaction time. Compared with the traditional MICP procedure, the effective two-step MICP method exhibits more promising application prospects for the immobilization of soluble HMs in aquatic environments.

Keywords

Bioremediation / Microbial-induced carbonate precipitation / Bacillus pasteurii / Heavy metal / Urea

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Xiaosong Huang: Writing - review & editing, Writing - original draft, Validation, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Data curation, Conceptualization. Rongjun Zhang: Writing - review & editing, Supervision, Conceptualization. Junjie Zheng: Writing - review & editing, Supervision.

Data availability

The data is provided in the paper.

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.

Acknowledgments

This study has been supported by the Key research and development project of Hubei Province (No. 2022BAA068), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (No. 52122806; 51978303), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 2042023kfyq03) and Joint fund of the technical R&D program of Henan Province (No. 225200810005). Their financial support is gratefully acknowledged.

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