Development and modeling of the effective bioactive poultices for reducing the nitrate content in building materials

•Reducing nitrate salt contents in the affected objects.•Development and modeling of the effective bioactive poultices.•Poultices provide a suitable microenvironment for the P. stutzeri metabolic activity.•Used an ANN model in order to reduce the time of experiments and the cost.

Two types of poultices, selected after the investigation of a number of raw materials, whose combination showed desired activities, were combined with a Pseudomonas stutzeri suspension to yield effective bioactive poultices for reducing the nitrate content in the model bricks. The efficiency was studied as a function of the application mode, porosity of the brick models, bacterial cells viability, and depth of the models. The outcome of the study is an ANN model with a high correlation coefficient, emphasizing that the depth of the bricks is the most influential (negative) factor considering the denitration efficiency.

Graphical abstractDownload high-res image (242KB)Download full-size image