IIT-Mandi Researchers Use Bacteria to Develop Soil Stabilisation Technique

New Delhi: IIT Mandi has developed a sustainable technique for soil stabilisation by using a harmless bacteria “S Pasteurii”.

The soil stabilisation method has been developed by the researchers of IIT Mandi by using the harmless bacteria that hydrolyses urea to precipitate calcite.

This process does not involve hazardous chemicals and the natural resources can be used sustainably.

Speaking about the development of the technique, Dr KV Uday, Assistant Professor, School of Engineering, IIT, Mandi said that the soil stabilisation is the procedure of conferring long-term permanent strength to the soil by artificial means.

The soil is used when construction work is carried out on unstable grounds or to prevent soil erosion. Traditionally, the mechanical processes such as compression and chemical processes, where the chemical grout fluids were injected into the soil were used for soil stabilisation.

In the past decades, an eco-friendly and sustainable soil stabilisation technique, microbial induced calcite precipitation (MICP) has been investigated across the world.

The bacteria are used to produce calcium carbonate (calcite) within soil pores in this method, which cements individual grains together, thereby enhancing and improving the soil/ground strength, he said.

Further, the study will be helpful in designing microbial methods to enhance and upgrade the soil shear strength at the field scale, in order to protect the soil from erosion in hilly areas and during geo-disasters.

The researchers are also working on the microbe-driven production of construction material from quarry waste, Uday said.

Although there are several studies on the development of MICP techniques for soil stabilisation around the world, the factors affecting the efficacy of the process are still not completely understood, he said.

He concluded by saying that in the future, the soil stabilisation research will play a vital role in improving the soil shear strength at the field scale to protect the soil from erosion in hilly areas and during geo-disasters in Himachal.

The findings of the research team have been recently published in the journal ‘Geotechnical and Geo-environmental Engineering of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)’.

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