Concrete is used in nearly all construction projects. Unfortunately, the concrete industry is a major producer of greenhouse gases. Soil is commonly excavated in various construction projects. With an environmentally-friendly binder, soil structures could replace a portion of concrete in some construction use cases, reducing demand of concrete and in turn reducing production of greenhouse gases. There has been interest in using biopolymers as a binder of soil. In this study, the urease enzyme was evaluated as a potential soil binder through the investigation of binding energies between various mineral surfaces and amino acids via density functional theory (DFT).  The urease enzyme from the soil-borne <i>Sporosarcina pasteurii</i> bacterium was used in this study. The amino acids within the enzyme that make up at least 5% of the enzyme and do not have ringed features were used as adsorbates. These amino acids (alanine, aspartic acid, glutamic acid, glycine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, threonine, and valine) were placed atop various mineral surfaces (quartz, alumina, hematite, and albite) with different functional groups adsorbing. DFT as implemented in the GPAW Python package was used for calculating binding energies.

Towards <i>in situ </i>protein-bound soil construction materials: A DFT investigation of binding energies between soil components and the urease enzyme

ACS Fall 2021

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Towards in situ protein-bound soil construction materials: A DFT investigation of binding energies between soil components and the urease enzyme