Reciprocity Effect Between Silicate Bacterium and Wollastonite

This chapter studies the reciprocity effect between wollastonite and a strain of silicate bacterium isolated from purple soil. The changes of pH value, glucose (GLU) residual concentration, electrolyte, and Mn, Si, Fe, etc., in the culture liquid with wollastonite after 48 h were analyzed. The results show that the GLU consumption of silicate bacterium with wollastonite was 2.5 times of the bacterial control. It indicates that wollastonite can obviously promote silicate bacterium growth, but the silicate bacteria cells were badly broken and even distorted observed by SEM. The solubilization of Si element by silicate bacterium from wollastonite reached above ten times that of the wollastonite control. At the same time, three typical peak intensities in FTIR of wollastonite (898 cm⁻¹, 925 cm⁻¹, 962 cm⁻¹) lowered obviously after the interaction with silicate bacterium, which shows that a great deal of Si has dissolved. Therefore, it is clear that wollastonite has a remarkable effect on the growth of silicate bacterium and there has been an obvious solubilization of Si.