Abstract
Enzyme-induced carbonate precipitation (EICP) is a green and sustainable soil improvement technology with promising geo-environmental and ecological engineering applications. Utilization of plant-derived crude urease has the potential to disrupt the cost barrier created by expensive high-purity commercial urease, increasing the feasibility of large-scale EICP applications. This study investigated the catalytic characteristics in the EICP of ureases crudely extracted from various plant sources and evaluated the extraction techniques and enzyme costs. Jack beans, sword beans, pigeon peas, soybeans, black beans, watermelon seeds, and seeding-watermelon seeds were employed for urease extraction. An extraction method with higher urease extraction efficiency, simpler procedure, and lower time and labor costs was proposed and recommended for future mass production. The results showed that sword bean had the highest urease extraction efficiency of 0.6977 mmol/min/g. Plant-derived crude ureases saved ∼ 5–2550 times the enzyme cost over commercial ureases. Sword bean crude urease was recommended as the most promising alternative to commercial ureases because of the highest urease enrichment degree, lowest enzyme cost, and superior catalytic properties in EICP. The presence of complementary proteins enabled the plant-derived crude ureases to have more stable urease activity (to pH changes) and a higher carbonate precipitation rate than commercial urease. The significant differences in morphology and bonding force of the produced calcite crystals indicated that plant-derived crude ureases were more effective than commercial ureases in bio-cementation.
Published Version
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