Influence of Sporasarcina pasteurii cells on rheological properties of cement paste

Abstract

Nowadays with the developments in the concrete materials technology, researches started to focus on highly flowable mixes with improved rheological properties. These highly flowable mixes generally require use of viscosity modifying agents (VMAs) to reduce bleeding and segregation. VMAs are water-soluble polymers that can be produced from acrylic polymers and polysaccharide-based biopolymers obtained from cellulose, starch or bacterial fermentation. Through the literature, nopal mucilage, brown algae and bacterial cell walls were proposed as alternatives to these bio-based admixtures. However, these alternatives also require extra processing which results again with a higher unit cost. This paper summarizes the rheological properties of a cement paste including bacterial cells. The main goal of this study was to investigate the influence of Sporasarcina pasteurii (S. pasteurii) cells on viscosity and yield stress of cement-based materials. The bacterial cells were directly incorporated to the mix water and influence of cells on viscosity and yield strength was evaluated by rheological tests. In addition, the influence of bacteria dosage, water to cement ratio (w/c), use of superplasticizers and fly ash on performance of biological VMA were investigated. Our results showed that the apparent viscosity and yield stress of the cement-paste mix were increased with the addition of the microorganisms. Moreover, the provided biological VMA was found to be compatible with the use of fly ash and superplasticizers depending on the w/c of cement paste.