Sustainable Management of Industrial Sludge Through Vermistabilisation Utilising Pollutants Loaded Spent Biochar Produced from the Wastewater Treatment Process

The rapid expansion of demography and industrialisation has aggravated the concern for industrial solid waste management in developing countries mostly. Therefore, an enormous volume of hazardous industrial trash, both in solid and liquid forms, has triggered the research on developing a cost-effective, eco-friendly, and sustainable technology for waste management. Conventional treatment technologies including incineration and direct landfilling may further pollute the environment through the emission of pollutant gases and the leaching of hazardous chemicals into the soil and groundwater, respectively. Hence, in the current scenario, researchers are focused on the vermistabilisation of industrial sludge as a sustainable solution for recycling the sludge into value-added biofertiliser, useful in organic farming. Vermistabilisation is a closed-loop approach for transforming hazardous waste into nutrient-rich organic fertiliser for improving soil health by the activity of earthworms. Research to date demonstrate the vermistabilisation of different organic waste and the effect of fresh biochar amendments; therefore, this chapter will find the effect of different waste-derived biochar as an amendment, potential earthworms used in that process, and the transformation pathway with special emphasis on the use of pollutant-loaded spent biochar collected after industrial wastewater treatment. This study also exhibits the future scope for the commercialisation of vermicompost derived from industrial waste using pollutant-loaded biochar.