Bacterial Growth Induced Biocementation Technology, ‘Space-Brick’ - A Proposal for Experiment at Microgravity and Planetary Environments

Kumar, Aloke; Dikshit, Rashmi; Gupta, Nitin; Jain, A.; Dey, Arjun; Nandi, Anuj; Venugopal, I.; Viswanathan, Koushik; Sridhara, N.; Rajendra, A.

doi:10.1101/2020.01.22.914853

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Biomineralization processes have been proposed as a means of cutting the construction costs on the Moon and Mars (Cockell, 2010;Dikshit et al, 2020;Kumar et al, 2020). More work is needed on the feasibility of the use of Mars dust and regolith for such a proposed in-situ resource utilization, e.g.…”

Section: Bio-materials For In-situ Resource Utilizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mars: new insights and unresolved questions

Changela

Chatzitheodoridis

Antunes

et al. 2021

International Journal of Astrobiology

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Mars exploration motivates the search for extraterrestrial life, the development of space technologies, and the design of human missions and habitations. Here, we seek new insights and pose unresolved questions relating to the natural history of Mars, habitability, robotic and human exploration, planetary protection, and the impacts on human society. Key observations and findings include: – high escape rates of early Mars' atmosphere, including loss of water, impact present-day habitability; – putative fossils on Mars will likely be ambiguous biomarkers for life; – microbial contamination resulting from human habitation is unavoidable; and – based on Mars' current planetary protection category, robotic payload(s) should characterize the local martian environment for any life-forms prior to human habitation. Some of the outstanding questions are: – which interpretation of the hemispheric dichotomy of the planet is correct; – to what degree did deep-penetrating faults transport subsurface liquids to Mars' surface; – in what abundance are carbonates formed by atmospheric processes; – what properties of martian meteorites could be used to constrain their source locations; – the origin(s) of organic macromolecules; – was/is Mars inhabited; – how can missions designed to uncover microbial activity in the subsurface eliminate potential false positives caused by microbial contaminants from Earth; – how can we ensure that humans and microbes form a stable and benign biosphere; and – should humans relate to putative extraterrestrial life from a biocentric viewpoint (preservation of all biology), or anthropocentric viewpoint of expanding habitation of space? Studies of Mars' evolution can shed light on the habitability of extrasolar planets. In addition, Mars exploration can drive future policy developments and confirm (or put into question) the feasibility and/or extent of human habitability of space.

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Section: Bio-materials For In-situ Resource Utilizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mars: new insights and unresolved questions

Changela

Chatzitheodoridis

Antunes

et al. 2021

International Journal of Astrobiology

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“…Artificially cemented bio-bricks made out of sands closely resemble their natural counterparts with respect to the failure mechanism at micro-scale (Table 2). Few studies, in fact, have tested the idea of consolidating lunar simulant soil in the form of a brick with non-trivial strength properties (Dikshit et al, 2020;Kumar et al, 2020;Dikshit et al, 2022). However, the average mean particle size for regolith (D 50 = 72 μm) is approximately one order smaller than those sands (0.36-0.73 mm) used to produce artificially cemented bio-bricks in Table 2.…”

Section: Research Needs and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

An assumption of in situ resource utilization for “bio-bricks” in space exploration

Zuo

2023

Front. Mater.

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Microbially induced carbonate precipitation (MICP) mimics the natural cementation process that occurs in various geological settings by using the bicarbonate minerals resulting from various bacterial metabolic pathways as cementing agents. This bio-technique can be used to manufacture so-called “bio-bricks,” which rival regular bricks in strength and durability. In the last two decades, MICP has been increasingly utilized for the maintenance and repair of infrastructure. More recently, this process has also been shown to have great potential as an energy-saving and cost-effective means of in situ resource utilization (ISUR) to produce construction materials; these can be utilized for extraterrestrial human settlements for space programs such as lunar exploration. We thus review the description of natural cementation, the anaerobic and aerobic bacterial metabolic activities leading to calcium carbonate precipitation, the properties of the lunar regolith, the production of bio-bricks, and potential research needs.

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“…Microbial induced calcium carbonate precipitation (MICP), one of the mechanisms of bio-mineralization, is a process which creates a favourable microenvironment for calcium carbonate precipitation by microbes [ 6 ]. MICP has potential applications such as prevention of soil erosion [ 7 , 8 ], enhancing the durability of concrete [ 9 ], restorations of cultural and historical assets [ 10 – 12 ] and production of bio-cement [ 13 – 15 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Microbially induced calcite precipitation using Bacillus velezensis with guar gum

et al. 2020

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Mineral precipitation via microbial activity is a well-known process with applications in various fields. This relevance of microbially induced calcite precipitation (MICP) has pushed researchers to explore various naturally occurring MICP capable bacterial strains. The present study was performed to explore the efficiency of microbially induced calcite precipitation (MICP) via locally isolated bacterial strains and role of guar gum, which is a naturally occurring polymer, on the MICP process. The strains were isolated from local soil and screened for urease activity Further, the urease positive strain was subjected to urea and calcium chloride based medium to investigate the efficacy of isolated strain for microbial induced precipitation. Among screened isolates, the soil bacterium that showed urease positive behaviour and precipitated calcium carbonate was subjected to 16S rRNA gene sequencing. This strain was identified as Bacillus velezensis. Guar gum-a natural polymer, was used as a sole carbon source to enhance the MICP process. It was observed that the isolated strain was able to breakdown the guar gum into simple sugars resulting in twofold increase in calcium carbonate precipitate. Major biochemical activities of isolated strain pertaining to MICP such as ammonium ion concentration, pH profiling, and total reducing sugar with time were explored under four different concentrations of guar gum (0.25%, 0.5%, 0.75% and 1% w/v). Maximum ammonium ion concentration (17.5 μg/ml) and increased pH was observed with 1% guar gum supplementation, which confirms augmented MICP activity of the bacterial strain. Microstructural analysis of microbial precipitation was performed using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) techniques, which confirmed the presence of calcium carbonate in different phases. Further, XRD and SEM based studies corroborated that guar gum supplemented media showed significant increase in stable calcite phase as compared to media without guar gum supplementation. Significant diverse group of nitrogenous compounds were observed in guar gum supplemented medium when subjected to Gas Chromatography-Mass spectrometry (GC-MS) profiling.

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Bacterial Growth Induced Biocementation Technology, ‘Space-Brick’ - A Proposal for Experiment at Microgravity and Planetary Environments

Cited by 3 publications

References 19 publications

Mars: new insights and unresolved questions

Mars: new insights and unresolved questions

An assumption of in situ resource utilization for “bio-bricks” in space exploration

Microbially induced calcite precipitation using Bacillus velezensis with guar gum

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