Biocement
WHY THIS IS ON OUR RADAR
Traditional cement production is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions → responsible for 6% of total CO2 emissions1. Current process requires heating to break down raw materials and bind them together again.
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State-of-the-art:
Current industrial production: traditional process that requires burning materials (heat) producing CO2.
Biocement: ureolytic bacteria for biomineralization (CaCO3). Process produces CO2.
Environmental benefits of biocement: Potential for lower C footprint due to not requiring high-temperature kilns, sequestering CO2, and self-healing materials allowing for long design life, reducing replacement.
Self-healing biocement (crack filling): spores of ureolytic bacteria are incorporated into cement; in contact with water spores activate and precipitate CaCO3 to fill the crack.
Commercial adoption: at least 3 companies use microbial-induced carbonate precipitation; 1 uses naturally occurring bacteria (BioMason) and another engineered bacteria (Basilisk).
Industrial bio focus: small materials (tiles or cracks self-healing products) → hard to scale?
Sporosarcina pasteurii, Bacillus (sphaericus, subtilis, halodurans, pseudofirmus).
Opportunities:
Leverage genetics: few organisms appear in a quick search with no genetics (7 with more than 2 pubs on the topic); organism with highest number of publications, S. pasteurii, does not have genetic tools.
Potential for material: Engineering organisms can be a potential avenue to fine-tune the properties of the materials generated.
Potential for Tn-seq: Tn-seq can help identify bottlenecks in growth to improve yields, rate, and titer.
Potential for scalability: Potential to improve growth and biomineralization process to make it more compelling to increase production yields
Assay required: CaCO2 precipitation (dry mass); material (FTIR, compression).
Risks:
Growth rate challenges: Sporosarcina is a slow grower, affects feasibility to apply it industrially. Process may not be fully scalable. Not many organisms studied.
Survival in environment: Organisms need to survive and function under the specific conditions of concrete, including alkalinity, dryness, and limited nutrient availability.
Risk-aversion: Concrete companies are risk-averse due to potential damage claims.
Environmental concerns: Potential risk would be environmental containment (GMOs self-healing).
Strategy for strain selection:
Focus: industrial scalability, not on self-healing.
Keywords: ureolytic bacteria, biocement, bioconcrete, MICP.
Selection: up to 6 organisms; 3 with different levels of genetics (e.g. some replicating vectors but no Tn or recombination), 3 with no genetics in different taxonomic levels.
