Unlocking the potential of biopolymer soil stabilisation

到2027年，全球土壤稳定市场预计将增长至350亿美元，主要受基础设施和建筑活动的推动，并因日益迫切的适应气候变化、洪水风险和海平面上升的需求而加剧。水泥和石灰被广泛用于稳定土壤，但存在显著的碳和能源成本。天然来源的生物聚合物是一种有前途的低碳“绿色”替代品，在稳定土壤中实现比水泥更高的强度，并且成本相似。然而，生物聚合物的广泛吸收受到以下事实的阻碍，即它们具有（a）差的耐水性和（B）差的耐生物降解性。为了解决这些局限性，本提案旨在研究新的生物聚合物处理工艺，这些工艺从分子水平上设计，可以应用于土壤/生物聚合物混合阶段。这些材料仅使用少量额外的天然材料就可以提供防水和生物降解性能，如果成功证明，它们有可能对土壤稳定市场产生变革性影响。

The global soil stabilisation market is forecast to grow to $35 billion by 2027 driven primarily by infrastructure and construction activities and exacerbated by the increasingly urgent need to adapt to climate change, flood risk and sea-level rise. Cement and lime are widely used to stabilise soil, but suffer from significant carbon and energy costs. Naturally sourced biopolymers are a promising low carbon 'green' substitute, achieving higher strength in stabilised soils than cement and at similar cost. However, widespread uptake of biopolymers is impeded by the fact that they suffer from (a) poor water resistance and (b) poor resistance to biodegradation over time. To address these limitations, this proposal aims to investigate novel biopolymer treatment processes which have been designed from the molecular level up and which can be applied at the soil/biopolymer mixing stage. These have the scope to provide water and biodegradation resistance using only small volumes of additional natural materials and if successfully demonstrated have the potential to achieve a transformational impact on the soil stabilisation market.