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Bio-management of Textile Industrial Wastewater Sludge Using Earthworms: A Doable Strategy Toward Sustainable Environment

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Handbook of Solid Waste Management

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Abstract

Due to the rapid increase of industrial sectors in India especially textile industries utilize a large quantity of freshwater to create different fabric materials and other textile-related products. During the process, textile mills use various dyes such as azo, reactive, as well as triphenylmethane and eliminate toxic effluent along with the excess amount of chemical dyes that produce an enormous amount of wastewater sludge after the preliminary treatment of effluent. The textile industrial sludge contains different heavy metals including chromium, zinc, copper, lead, cadmium, and nickel. At present, a large number of Indian textile industries discharge wastewater sludge unscientifically. Currently, different disposal methods such as chemical, physical, and biological have been employed to combat and recover essential nutrients from textile industrial wastewater sludge. Among them, biological methods especially vermiremediation is one of the cost-effective and eco-friendly techniques appropriate for waste management. The different earthworm species effectively degrade the complex textile industrial organic waste materials including wastewater sludge and a considerable amount of toxic heavy metal ions bioaccumulate in the internal tissues (e.g., chlorogogenous tissues) of the earthworms resulting in limited metals in earthworm-treated substrate. Besides, vermicompost has a significant quantity of essential macronutrients (e.g., nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium), micronutrients, humic substances, and plant growth-promoting hormones (e.g., auxins, cytokinins, and gibberellins) which strongly enhance crop production. The textile industrial wastewater sludge can be transformed into nutrient-rich vermicompost which is an alternative for chemical fertilizers in agricultural crop production.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Vermitechnology and Ecotoxicology Laboratory, Department of Zoology, School of Life Sciences, Periyar University, Salem, Tamil Nadu, India

    Ananthanarayanan Yuvaraj & Ramasundaram Thangaraj

  2. Department of Botany, Government Arts College (Autonomous), Salem, Tamil Nadu, India

    Natchimuthu Karmegam

Authors
  1. Ananthanarayanan Yuvaraj
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  2. Ramasundaram Thangaraj
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  3. Natchimuthu Karmegam
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Correspondence to Ramasundaram Thangaraj .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Research and Development Center, Teerthanker Mahaveer University, Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh, India

    Chinnappan Baskar

  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapur, Singapore

    Seeram Ramakrishna

  3. Chemistry and Bioprospecting Division, Forest Research Institute, Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India

    Shikha Baskar

  4. Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, New Delhi, Delhi, India

    Rashmi Sharma

  5. Department of Mechanical Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Amutha Chinnappan

  6. Department of Basic science, Sardar Vallabh bahi Patel university of agriculture and technology, Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, India

    Rashmi Sehrawat

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  1. Research and Development Center, Teerthanker Mahaveer University, Moradabad, India

    Chinnappan Baskar

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Yuvaraj, A., Thangaraj, R., Karmegam, N. (2021). Bio-management of Textile Industrial Wastewater Sludge Using Earthworms: A Doable Strategy Toward Sustainable Environment. In: Baskar, C., Ramakrishna, S., Baskar, S., Sharma, R., Chinnappan, A., Sehrawat, R. (eds) Handbook of Solid Waste Management. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7525-9_59-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7525-9_59-1

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