Sealing of sand using spraying and percolating biogrouts for the construction of model aquaculture pond in arid desert

Viktor Stabnikov,Volodymyr Ivanov,Jian Chu

doi:10.1007/s40071-016-0136-z

Viktor Stabnikov, Volodymyr Ivanov + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s40071-016-0136-z

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Abstract

The topic of the paper is the biotechnological sealing of sand using calcium- or iron-based biogrouts. These processes are modeling the sealing of sand during construction of aquaculture pond in the arid desert. The experiments showed that it is possible to conduct biosealing of sand using microbially induced calcium carbonate precipitation performed by the spraying of dead but urease-active bacteria. The sealing was also effective due to ferric hydroxide precipitation in sand after percolation of ferrous-containing solution produced from iron ore and cellulose by the community of acidogenic and iron-reducing bacteria. These treatments of sand can decrease its hydraulic conductivity from the level of 10−4 m/s to the level of 10−8 m/s, which is an acceptable level for the aquaculture ponds. The cost of this sealing, especially when the local sources of calcium chloride brain or low grade iron (hydr)oxides of iron ore are applied, could be several times lower than any other known methods of the sand sealing, and could be used in aquaculture practice for the construction of fish, prawns, or algae ponds in sand of the arid deserts.

Highlights

Non-arable land in an arid desert can be used for algae, fish, and prawns pond cultures (Winckelmann et al 2015) but the problem is the high cost of the sealing a pond constructed in sandy soil
To produce solution of ferrous ions, organic acids must be produced by acidogenic bacteria fermenting cellulose at the first step as shown below: C6H12O6 þ 0:82 H2O ! 1:13 CH3COOH þ 0:35 C2H5COOH þ 0:26 C3H7COOH þ 1:67 CO2 þ 2:47 H2 ð3Þ
The best way to ensure biosafety of the aquaculture pond biosealing could be killing of bacterial cells and application of dead bacterial cells, because application of enzyme urease for large-scale biocementation could be too expensive and probably the presence of bacterial cells is needed to create crystallization centers for calcium carbonate precipitation on sand surface (Stocks-Fischer et al 1999; Gat et al 2014)

Summary

Introduction

Non-arable land in an arid desert can be used for algae, fish, and prawns pond cultures (Winckelmann et al 2015) but the problem is the high cost of the sealing a pond constructed in sandy soil. Potential solution of this problem can be a biosealing of sand as shown in this paper. To produce solution of ferrous ions, organic acids must be produced by acidogenic bacteria fermenting cellulose at the first step as shown below (molar ratios of volatile fatty acids were taken from Madigan et al 2014): C6H12O6 þ 0:82 H2O ! Iron ore should be reduced by iron-reducing bacteria using organic acids, mainly acetate: ð4Þ

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