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Abstract
Recent research, in the field of structural durability and longevity has raised the interests in the precipitation of calcium carbonate (CaCO3) by certain bacterial strains. Use of bacteria as a self-healing material via bio mineralisation is a natural healing process which heals crack by mineral precipitation. The microbiologically induced precipitation accelerates at different rates at different conditions. Therefore, this environmental study was aimed at finding the best curing media, possibility to apply Bacillus megaterium integrated into mortar matrix to act as a self-healing agent to seal the crack at a 105 cells/ml concentration by subjecting the mortar cubes to varying temperature conditions. The change in properties of mortar cubes with change in curing media, days of curing and range of Bacillus solution added were analysed. The results were compared with the conventional ones cured in different media. X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) confirms the microbiologically induced mineral precipitation. Mortar cubes are cracked and evaluated visually for successive days to find the healing efficiency. The conclusions of the paper suggest promising application of self-healing mortar cubes at different geographical locations by varying the amount of bacterial solution.