Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
9.2.2
Applications of Straw in Restoring Materials
of Ecological Engineering
9.2.2.1
Application in Preparation of Greening Materials of a Rocky Slope
In recent years, with the increasing strength of infrastructure construction and high
demand for the protection of the ecological environment in China, roads, railways,
and construction of hydropower projects all require ecological protection on a
rocky slope. Nearly 4
10
5
km
2
of rock surface exist in China, which increases
with increasing yearly construction and development. According to requirements
of engineering construction and ecological restoration, the ecological protection
technology of rocky slope wounds has a huge market demand.
The rock surface refers to the exposed surface formed by excavation and
movement of rock and soil body, which is caused by basic infrastructure (such
as roads, railways, electricity, water and municipal engineering construction, etc.)
and industrial and mining production processes (such as in mine areas, quarries,
etc.). With the rapid development of economic construction, because of vegetation
destruction and dissipation of surface soil, soil erosion and ecological damage of
the wound slope gradually have become severe, becoming a hot topic of ecological
restoration. At present, the main measure of ecological protection is to combine
engineering measures with vegetation.
In the ecological slope protection technology applied in China, the thick-layer
base material spraying (TBS) technique accounts for about 20 % of the market. In
2002, China independently developed this technology by combining the application
of basic materials with engineering measures [
13
]. Greenery basic materials are the
core of this technology; they are mainly prepared from highland peat, straw fiber,
organic fertilizer, and other functional materials. However, because most existing
greenery substrate products take peat and other natural organic fertilizers as the
main functional materials, the cost of this technology is still relatively high [
14
]. At
the same time, straw without any processing has limited effect on stabilization of the
soil body, and straw after a specific pretreatment can replace most of the traditional
greenery substrate, but to now, no reports exist about taking pretreatment products
of straw to produce greenery substrates of rocky slopes.
Existing greenery substrates need to be added with many natural organic
materials, and product characteristics of natural plant straw are poor. To solve the
problems mentioned, Chen et al. [
15
] provided a method using steam-exploded
straw through solid-state fermentation to prepare greenery substrates for rocky
slopes. Through the pretreatment of steam explosion and solid-state fermentation,
based on of stable growth of ecological recovery vegetation, new-style greenery
substrates were produced to replace the peat or organic fertilizer because they can
increase the stability of soil and have resistance to erosion and provide prevention
of plant disease, reducing application costs and ecological resource damage.
From the point of view that straw and other renewable resources can effectively
enter into the natural carbon cycle, for the specific needs of the existing greenery for
