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Vermicomposting of sludge from a malt house
- Source :
- Waste Management. 118:232-240
- Publication Year :
- 2020
- Publisher :
- Elsevier BV, 2020.
-
Abstract
- Malting sludge is waste that could be used as a good soil conditioner after proper treatment. In the current study, the feasibility of vermicomposting malting sludge and its mixtures with straw pellets on the basis of physico-chemical and biological properties was verified. A vermicomposting system with continuous feeding of earthworms Eisenia andrei was used. The greatest number and biomass of earthworms was found in the variant with 25% malt house sludge + 75% straw pellets (on average of all layers: 320 earthworms/kg and 35 g/kg, respectively), followed by a variant with 50% malt house sludge + 50% straw pellets (on average of all layers: 47 earthworms/kg and 13 g/kg, respectively), indicating that a minimum of 50% (vol.) straw pellets is necessary for successful vermicomposting of malting sludge. Most earthworms lived in the youngest upper layer (42% and 52% of total number and earthworm biomass, respectively). On the contrary, the oldest bottom layers (final vermicomposts) after 180 days of vermicomposting were characterized by maturity, indicating lesser contents of microorganisms and enzyme activity. These vermicomposts had favorable agrochemical properties (pH = 7.8, EC = 1.2 mS cm−1, C/N = 11, Ptot = 1.23%, Ktot = 2.55%, Mgtot = 0.42%). The proportion of the available contents in the total contents were 10%, 59%, and 19% for P, K, and Mg, respectively.
- Subjects :
- 020209 energy
Microorganism
Eisenia andrei
Pellets
Biomass
02 engineering and technology
010501 environmental sciences
engineering.material
01 natural sciences
Soil
Animal science
0202 electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering
Animals
Oligochaeta
Waste Management and Disposal
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
Sewage
biology
Chemistry
Earthworm
Straw
biology.organism_classification
Soil conditioner
engineering
Vermicompost
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 0956053X
- Volume :
- 118
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Waste Management
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....664827c5529c8ca12c9a7b2e6dac0d82