Ancient Chinese building secret revealed: sticky rice mortar

by Elizabeth Weise v.gd/stickyrice Scientists in China have discovered the secret to a 1,500-year-old super-strong ancient Chinese sticky rice mortar that is found in buildings still standing today. Chinese scientists say that old buildings were made with bond that had sticky rice in it. Sticky rice is the sweet, glutinous rice familiar to many Americans from a dessert served in Thai restaurants in which it is paired with coconut milk and mango. It is a popular ingredient in many Asian cuisines. Koreans use sticky rice to make rice cake; in Thai, they use it for a dessert. But only the Chinese appear to have discovered that when mixed with slaked lime, it creates a composite organic/inorganic mortar of legendary strength. But it looks like the Chinese made a good guess when they mixed it with lime powder and the bond was really strong. Bingjian Zhang and colleagues from the Laboratory of Cultural Relic Conservation Materials in the Department of Chemistry at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou did research. Their results are in the American Chemical Society journal, Accounts of Chemical Research. The key to this super-strong mortar is amylopectin, a complex carbohydrate, found in the rice. Zhang explains:
Analytical study shows the ancient masonry mortar is a kind of special organic-inorganic composite material. The inorganic component is calcium carbonate, and the organic component is amylopectin, which comes from the sticky rice soup added to the mortar.

The rice has amylopectin in it. It is a kind of starch. When it is mixed with slaked lime which is inorganic, it makes a strong bond.

In addition, amylopectin inhibited the growth of the calcium carbonate crystals in the mortar, producing a compact microstructure that ages well.
The pectin helps slow down or stop any crystal formation (scaling?). It binds well and lasts long.

Zhang calls the sticky rice mortar one of the greatest technological innovations of the time. It was stronger and more resistant to water than pure lime mortar. It was used to build tombs and pagodas, clan residences and city walls (even the Great Wall?), some of which still exist today and some of which have survived earthquakes. It was a great new idea to find out that sticky rice was stronger and more water repellant than ordinary mortar.It was used to build tombs, pagodas, and city walls (maybe also tulous). Many of these structures are still standing, even after earthquakes. The earliest record of sticky rice mortar is found in a book on construction techniques from the Ming Dynasty, 1368 to 1644. But archeological digs show that it was already a mature technology by the SouthNorth Dynasty, from 386 to 589. An ancient book from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1633) mentions this method. But study of old buildings shows it was used even 1000 years earlier. Ancient Chinese builders experimented with many kinds of organic compounds to add to mortar, including egg whites, tung oil, fish oil and animal blood. But sticky rice mortar was the most widely used.

The scientists in Hangzhou made plain lime mortar and sticky rice mortars to compare them. They found that the sticky rice mortar has greater mechanical strength and could easily be used to restore ancient stone work. Long ago, Chinese builders tested adding seed oil, egg whites, fish oil, animal blood to try to make mortar stronger. But they still found that sticky rice glue was the best. Indeed, a bridge from the Song Dynasty (960-1279) was restored in 2006 using sticky rice-lime mortar, the authors reported. In 2006, workers used the strong mortar to fix a bridge from the Song Dynasty. More sources: v.gd/stickyrice2 http://news.discovery.com/history/sticky-rice-ancient-chinesebuildings.htm v.gd/stickyricewall http://www.treehugger.com/sustainable-productdesign/sticky-rice-is-secret-ingredient-in-great-wall-of-chinas-strength.html