Synthesis of Nano-gypsum: A Computational Approach to Encounter Soil Salinity and Land Degradation

Synthesis of nano-gypsum is one of emerging research area owing to its potential advantage to overcome the issue of soil salinity. Despite this interest, a little literature is available on its structural stability in nano scale length of gypsum. Thus, in this study a computational approach along with experimental investigation is used to investigate the effect of nano-gypsum on soil salinity. Density functional theory (DFT) is used to calculate energy of nano-gypsum clusters using hybrid functional field method (i.e. B3LYP). It is observed that evaluated binding energy, formation energy and vibrational spectra establishes the structural stability of CaSO4 center dot 2H(2)O cluster at similar to 70 to 75 units of gypsum. The size of stable of nano-gypsum cluster and size of physically prepared nano-gypsum is close to each other. Further, deployment of nano-gypsum yields significant reduction in soil pH, electrical conductivity and sodium adsorption ratio during field trails indicating improved soil health.