Investigation of the carbonate precipitation capacity of cyanobacteria for the generation of novel living building materials

The construction materials industry has a large number of emissions to the environment. Among all of them, the cement industry alone accounts for 7-8% of total CO2 emissions globally. For this reason, we investigate the bio-mineralization capacity of cyanobacteria and use them to precipitate CaCO3, using them in cement manufacturing. We have tested different biochemical and biophysical factors with different strains of cyanobacteria to figure out the most appropriate strain and conditions to generate living building materials. In this thesis, we have identified the best-performing species among those selected cyanobacterial strains and figured out the optimum physicochemical environmental parameters using Design of Experiments tools. Moreover, we have tested the Living building materials based on cell viability and mechanical stability. Ultimately, this work proves that massive initial biomass volumes are unnecessary. Instead, balancing structural physics with optimized alkaline stress unlocks highly efficient, self-protecting biocement matrices. This research establishes a definitive scalable recipe for the next generation of regenerative, carbon-neutral, and self-healing living structural materials.