Abstract
Climate change, infrastructure resilience, and resource recovery from waste have emerged as grand challenges for civil engineers in the 21st century. Wicked problems associated with these global grand challenges are necessitating innovative, multidisciplinary thinking and multiscale, integrated solutions that are spurring the development of a new field—construction biotechnology. While the field of construction biotechnology spans multiple scales, this review highlights the promise and potential of nanoscale (<100 nm) biotechnological applications to civil engineering. While the field of nanotechnology has revolutionized other industries, applications of nanotechnology in civil engineering have remained limited due to techno-economic and environmental barriers. Biological production of functional nanoparticles (NPs), however, offers new economical routes to develop resilient, high-performance cementitious materials while simultaneously addressing critical needs related to wastewater and air-pollution treatment. Recent research has elucidated that biological production of NPs exhibit preferred—and genetically controllable—morphological characteristics that could tailor the structure-property relationships of civil engineering materials. The natural ability as well as the programmability via synthetic biology allow microorganisms to immobilize heavy metals (e.g., Hg, Cr, Zn, Cd, Cu, Ag) and interact with greenhouse gases and volatile organic compounds, therefore affording civil engineers a grand opportunity to treat wastewater and recover rare earth elements, and remove air pollutions. In addition to featuring state-of-the-art research in the field, this review summarizes the opportunities and challenges of nanoscale biotechnology and proposes a roadmap of research for civil engineers of the 21st century.
Highlights
Among the grand societal challenges of our time, climate change, infrastructure resilience, and resource recovery from waste are of critical importance (DeJong et al, 2011)
While sustainability has commonly been investigated in terms of reduced emissions associated with the manufacturing process, it could refer to imparting additional functionalities with in situ environmental benefits
3.2.2 Removal via Microorganisms While TiO2 NPs produced via microorganisms (Table 1) can be applied to cementitious materials in the same manner as discussed in section 2.2.2, we aim to review the remediation of air pollution directly by microorganisms
Summary
Among the grand societal challenges of our time, climate change, infrastructure resilience, and resource recovery from waste are of critical importance (DeJong et al, 2011). In addition to high energy consumption, the use of toxic chemicals, such as non-polar solvents used during synthesis or chemicals used to functionalize NP surfaces, are safety concerns for environmental and human health (Li et al, 2011; TiquiaArashiro and Rodrigues, 2016) Such barriers have somewhat limited the applications of nanoparticles in cementitious materials. Microorganisms (e.g., fungi and bacteria) take target metal ions from the environment and convert them into metal or metal oxide NPs (called bio-NPs hereafter) (Li et al, 2011; Hulkoti and Taranath, 2014; Tiquia-Arashiro and Rodrigues, 2016) Such processes eliminate or reduce the use of expensive and potentially toxic chemicals, a benefit that has significantly promoted research in the field of NP biosynthesis (Li et al, 2011; Faramarzi and Sadighi, 2013). The significance and future development of the field of nanoscale construction biotechnology are discussed in light of opportunities and challenges that civil engineers will face in the 21st century
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