Open Access

ARTICLE

Experimental Study for the Cementation Effect of Dust Soil by Using Soybean Urease

Jianwei Zhang¹, Yue Yin¹, Lei Shi¹, Yi Han², Mi Zhou^3,*, Xihong Zhang⁴

1 School of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Henan University, Kaifeng, 475004, China
2 College of Civil and Transportation Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing, 210024, China
3 State Key Laboratory of Subtropical Building Science, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510640, China
4 School of Civil and Mechanical Engineering, Curtin University, Bentley, 6102, Australia

* Corresponding Author: Mi Zhou. Email:

Journal of Renewable Materials 2023, 11(6), 2893-2911. https://doi.org/10.32604/jrm.2023.025436

Received 12 July 2022; Accepted 20 September 2022; Issue published 10 April 2023

Abstract

Dust is an environmental and health hazard. In this study, a new technology for dust suppressant is introduced using soybean urease with an optimal cementing solution. Calcium carbonate is produced by soybean urease and cementing solution, which bonds the soil particles towards a dust suppressant. A laboratory wind tunnel test is carried out to examine its effectiveness and discover possible optimization solutions. Several factors, including soybean meal concentration, cementing solution concentration, and volume of solution per unit area, are examined to quantify their influences on soil transport mass, evaporation ratio, evaporation rate, surface strength, water retention ratio, and infiltration rate of soil treated by different dust suppressants. Field tests are conducted to explore the performance of this method in the natural environment. The results show that compared with other dust suppressants, the optimized soybean urease has the smallest evaporation rate, a moderate infiltration rate, the largest water retention ratio and surface strength. The indexes of soybean urease for dust suppressant are found to be better than traditional materials. In the natural environment, soybean urease has a stronger anti-disturbance ability. This study concludes that soybean urease dust suppressant has great application potential as a cheap and green method.

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Keywords

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