Three-tier vermiculture biotechnology to treat bio- solid wastes into bio-clean probiotics for agriculture
Ghatnekar, S.D.., Ghatnekar, S.S and Ghalsasi, D.S., Biotechnology Resource Centre, India
(free)
Biotechnology Resource Centre has developed and pioneered a prototype model of ‘Three tier vermiculture biotechnology’ to convert organic solid wastes produced by industries into useful plant probiotics. Since last fifteen years, this innovative biotechnology has been successfully implemented in industries like food processing, solvent extraction (soybean oil), gelatin, pulp and paper, textile, antibiotics, dairy, municipal sewage and slaughter houses. The protocol consists of combined use of specific earthworm sp., microorganisms and enzymes, which can treat and convert organic wastes into bio-clean plant probiotics. These bio-safe probiotics can be distributed by a concerned industry as bio-ethical soil conditioners to enrich the fertility.
In the first phase, solid wastes are subjected to 4-6 days of enzymatic and microbial treatment. Type of enzyme is selected on the basis of waste characteristics such as nitro, lipid or cellulose-based. Set of enzymes used are like, proteases, lipases, cellulases, xylanases, amylases etc. Microbial bio-cultures are brigades of degraders and deodorizers. And their tailor made combination will be selected for a specific bio-solid wastes.
Thereafter, enzymatically biodegraded and deodorized product in its second phase is subjected to the earthworm degradation in series of smooth-walled rectangular tanks having capacity to accommodate daily generation of bio-solid wastes of a specific unit along with sterilized bedding material. The complete biodegradation of waste into humus-like biomass is obtained after 18-20 days of vermiculture treatment.
In the third phase, to this biomass, selected nitrogen fixers and phosphate solubilizers are inoculated and kept for 5 days. In fine, within 30-32 days obnoxious sludge gets converted into clean and pathogen free plant probiotics. All the three phases are semi-automated and hardly 4 operators are required to manage a plant. Such a plant requires an area of about 1000 sq. m to treat 10 tonnes of solid wastes every day. The set up cost is just about £38 – 40,000. This is 1/5th of conventional chemical ETP. As the energy bill is bare minimum the running costs are almost negligible.
In fine, the paper describes detailed mathematical prototype model to convert organic bio-solids produced by industries into value added bio-safe probiotics for agriculture.
