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Treatment of Wastewater by Vermifiltration Integrated with Plants

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Earthworm Assisted Remediation of Effluents and Wastes

Abstract

In the present scenario, due to industrialization and urbanization, wastewater management is a major issue. In order to overcome the issue of wastewater treatment, vermifiltration is one of the best remedies available. Vermifiltration is the procedure of wastewater remediation that includes the joint action of earthworms and microbes. Vermifiltration coupled with phytoremediation could prove to be an efficient and easy-to-adapt technology that could be adopted at a community level. The treated wastewater obtained after vermifiltration is reported to have its utility in gardening, irrigation, and other reuse applications. To make the process more efficient, there is a future scope of study on earthworm-microorganism-plant interaction in the vermifiltration process integrated with plants. Treatment by vermifiltration could also be adopted at a micro level by the local communities. The process could provide an efficient mode of treatment wherever there is a lack of proper and adequate conventional treatment facilities. Future perspectives of this technology will thus depend on a large extent on the cost-benefit analysis of the process. The process could be made more cost efficient by incorporating the plants in combination with vermifiltration.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Botanical and Environmental Sciences, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, Punjab, India

    Anu Bala Chowdhary & Jahangeer Quadar

  2. Department of Environmental Sciences, Central University of Jharkhand, Ranchi, Jharkhand, India

    Bhaskar Singh

  3. Department of Zoology, Khalsa College Amritsar, Amritsar, Punjab, India

    Jaswinder Singh

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  1. Anu Bala Chowdhary
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  2. Jahangeer Quadar
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  3. Bhaskar Singh
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  4. Jaswinder Singh
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. River Basin Research Center, Gifu University, Gifu, Japan

    Sartaj Ahmad Bhat

  2. Botanical and Environmental Sciences, Guru Nanak Dev University, Punjab, India

    Adarsh Pal Vig

  3. River Basin Research Center, Gifu University, Gifu, Japan

    Fusheng Li

  4. Department of Environmental Energy and Engineering, Kyonggi University, Suwon, Korea (Republic of)

    Balasubramani Ravindran

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Chowdhary, A.B., Quadar, J., Singh, B., Singh, J. (2020). Treatment of Wastewater by Vermifiltration Integrated with Plants. In: Bhat, S., Vig, A., Li, F., Ravindran, B. (eds) Earthworm Assisted Remediation of Effluents and Wastes. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4522-1_3

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