Inhibiting water evaporation of ground surface by clay-based sand-fixing and grass-planting materials

According to the problem of available water conservation in sand consolidation, the sand-fixing and grass-planting materials were prepared with clay modified by emulsifying vegetable waxes and octylphenol polyoxyethylene ether (Span-80). The water retention property was studied in simulated desertification environmental climate and the materials were characterized by means of UV-Vis, SEM, FTIR, XRD and TA measurements. The results showed that the materials had excellent water retention properties, which owning to that vegetable waxes adhering evenly to clay particle surfaces, making the clay pores changing from hydrophilic to hydrophobic and so inhibiting the water evaporation. Grass-planting experiment showed that with reasonable mass ratio of vegetable waxes, clay and surfactant at 1:6:24, the materials not only inhibited water evaporation but also maintained sound air permeability so that the germination rate of grass seed was significantly improved from 5% to 45%.