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Frozen enzyme EICP method for more effective soil improvement

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Abstract

Enzyme-induced calcite precipitation (EICP) is one of the emerging soil improvement methods. However, when plant-based enzyme is used, the urease enzyme harvested from plants cannot be stored long. This affects large-scale applications of this method. This paper presents a new method that not only enables urease enzyme to be stored for a long duration, but also improves significantly the effectiveness and efficiency of EICP for soil improvement. In this method, the storage duration of soybean derived urease enzyme is prolonged by storing it at negative 20 degrees. The experimental results indicated that the frozen-stored urease enzyme had an activity of 326% higher than that of fresh enzyme. The shear strength of a fine sand treated using the frozen-stored enzyme is 238.8% higher than that using a normal EICP method. Thus, the frozen method not only overcomes the enzyme storage problem, but also offers a much-improved EICP method. The reasons for the higher urease activity and improved strength enhancement are also explained in this paper.

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Acknowledgements

This research is supported by the Grant No. COT-V1-2020-4 provided by Ministry of National Development and National Research Foundation, Singapore under the Cities of Tomorrow R&D programme. The first author would also like to thank the financial support from NTU Research Scholarship awarded by Nanyang Technological University.

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  1. School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

    Samuel Ng & Jian Chu

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  1. Samuel Ng
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  2. Jian Chu
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Contributions

S.N. designed and carried out the experiment and drafted the manuscript. J.C. conceived the study and reviewed the manuscript. All authors participated in contributing to text and the content of the manuscript, including revisions and edits. All authors read and approved the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jian Chu.

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Ng, S., Chu, J. Frozen enzyme EICP method for more effective soil improvement. Acta Geotech. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11440-024-02348-2

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