Treatment of Hospital Wastewater through Vermifiltration unit
2020 Volume 20 Page no- 1-13
Treatment of Hospital Wastewater through Vermifiltration unit
Neha Verma1 and Ashok K. Ghosh2
1Department of Botany, A. N. College, Patna,
2Bihar State Pollution Control Board, Patna, India
Email id:nehavipul15@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
A huge amount of water is consumed in hospitals. Consequently, considerable amount of hospital wastewater is generated and cannot be released without treatment because such water carries so many pathogens and harmful toxic substances. There are so many methods for treatment of wastewater, vermifiltration technique is one of them. Vermifiltration is one of the cheaper, environmentally sustainable, and acceptable treatment processes. In this study, earthworm’s species Eisenia fatida has been used for the treatment of hospital wastewater. The gut of the earthworm acts as a bioreactor. Earthworm can ingest the solid and liquid organic wastes and eject them as vermicompost. Wastewater analysis was done by vermifilter collected from Mahavir Cancer Sansthan & Research Center and PMCH, Patna. Efficiency of the system, variations of pH value, Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BODs), Total suspended solid (TSS), and Turbidity were measured in this study. A significant decrease in the level of BODs, COD, TSS, Turbidity, and neutralized pH of water was found using vermifiltration. Vermifiltration technology can be applied as an environment friendly method for the treatment of hospital wastewater. It also reduces the environmental risk.
Keywords: Vermifiltration (VF), Hospital wastewater from Mahavir Cancer Sansthan & Research Center (HWW1), Hospital wastewater from PMCH (HWW2), Vermiaqua of Mahavir Cancer Sansthan & Research Center (VA1), Vermiaqua of PMCH (VA2).
Paper History: Paper Received on 30/11/2020, Accepted on 14/02/2021 Published on 15/03/2021