Novel Understandings of Biomineralization in Backfill Materials: A Fundamental Investigation of Coal Gangue and Fly Ash Impact on B. pasteurii to Enhance Material Properties

Abstract

This paper proposes a fundamental investigation of coal gangue and fly ash impact on B. pasteurii to enhance the properties of backfill materials. The goal is to obtain effective microbial mineralization and potential mechanical properties of coal gangue and fly ash as backfill materials and to mitigate the impact of the most common binders used in the backfill material of mines. Micro-scale mineralization was performed with B. pasteurii bacteria using microbially induced carbonate precipitation (MICP) technology to clarify solid waste impact on B. pasteurii and to bind coal gangue and fly ash. Several tests were carried out to analyze the behavior of B. pasteurii, especially when it coexists with these two waste materials separately. In such cases, it was possible to observe a reduction in mineralization initiation time with respect to the natural mineralization of the MICP technology. Moreover, at the macro-scale, the new mineralized backfilling material shows good workability in the fresh state, whereas the strength at 28 days is 5.34 times higher than that obtained with non-mineralized coal gangue and fly ash.