Ecological Engineering 62 (2014) 7782

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Ecological Engineering
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ecoleng

Performance evaluation of vermilter at different hydraulic loading

rate using river bed material
Tarun Kumar , Ankur Rajpal, Renu Bhargava, K.S. Hari Prasad
Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Roorkee 247667, India

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The present work illustrates the potential of vermilter using river bed material with application of
Received 11 June 2013 wastewater at different hydraulic loading rates for the treatment. In addition, a comparative study was
Received in revised form 12 October 2013 performed with vermilter containing the earthworm species (Eisenia fetida) parallel to a geolter (with-
Accepted 21 October 2013
out earthworms) for the treatment of wastewater to achieve the requisite quality of the efuent. The
Available online 18 November 2013
wastewater was applied to the vermilter and geolter at four different hydraulic loading rates of 1.5, 2,
2.5 and 3.0 m3 m2 d1 . Among these, optimum results were observed in case of hydraulic loading rate
Keywords:
2.5 m3 m2 d1 . For this hydraulic loading rate, the removal efciency of biochemical oxygen demand,
Vermiltration
Vermilter total suspended solids and total dissolve solids with vermilter were 96%, 90% and 82%, while in geolter
Decentralized Wastewater Treatment it was observed 70%, 79% and 56% respectively. In addition, riverbed material was found to be better as a
Hydraulic loading rate media in vermilter for better growth of earthworm biomass. The treated efuent and nal vermicompost
River bed material both were found to be rich in nitrate and phosphate which can be used for agriculture purpose.
2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction vermiltration technology which show a high efcacy for sewage

Due to the increasing population and scarcity of treatment area,
high cost of wastewater collection and its treatment is not permit-
ting the conventional sewage treatment plant (STP) everywhere.
Hence, cost effective decentralized and eco-friendly treatments are
needed. Many developing countries cannot afford the construc-
tion of STPs, and hence, there is a growing need for developing
some ecologically safe and economically viable onsite small-scale
wastewater treatment technologies (Sinha et al., 2007). At this
crucial juncture, some ecologically engineered tools can address
issues related with safe and cost-effective wastewater treatments
technologies. Vermiltration is one such an alternative treatment
methods, where in organically polluted wastewater can be treated
using earthworms.
Vermiltration needs no external energy, except pumping.
Hence it can be very useful for small communities, colonies
and villages. Various researchers have been investing the poten-
tial of vermitechnology for decentralized wastewater treatment.
Small to pilot scale level studies have been carried out on
Corresponding author. Tel.: +91 7500219079.
E-mail addresses: vrma.tarun@gmail.com, ertarun verma@yahoo.co.in
(T. Kumar).
treatment with high attenuation rates of chemical oxygen demand
(COD), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) and suspended solid
(SS), as well as the ability to reduce nitrogen and phosphorus (Sinha
et al., 2008). Chemical factors (e.g. pH and ammonia) that may
affect the earthworms survival and their effect on treatment of
wastewater have also been studied. The pH in wastewater can be
almost neutralized by earthworms and there is very little or no
problem of any foul odour during the processing (Sinha et al., 2008;
Hughes et al., 2009). Hughes et al. (2009) has also reported that
ammonia had very low toxicity on the survival of earthworms in
vermilter. Vermiltration is more reliable than other wastewa-
ter treatment technologies like constructed wet land, stabilization
pond and other conventional technologies because these technolo-
gies need more area as compared to vermiltration (Xing et al.,
2010). It has also been reported that vermiltration process has
equal efciency to the activated sludge process (Li et al., 2009).
Most of the researchers have not studied in detail the effect on
different hydraulic loading rate on vermiltration. In addition, the
selection of vermilter bed media is also an important concern to
maximize the treatment efcacy of the system.
The aim of the present study is to study the effect of hydraulic
loading rate and the choice of vermilter media in vermiltra-
tion process. Vermiltration experiments were conducted at four
different hydraulic loading rates and using river bed material as

0925-8574/$ see front matter 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoleng.2013.10.028
78 T. Kumar et al. / Ecological Engineering 62 (2014) 7782
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the laboratory-scale vermilter and geolter (units: mm).
vermilter bed to nd out the optimum HLR for providing max-
imum efciency. The quality of efuent from vermilter is also
compared with that obtained using geolter.
2. Materials and methods
2.1. Experimental design
The experimental set up was placed in the solid waste Lab-
oratory of Civil Engineering Department, Indian Institute of
Technology (IIT) Roorkee. Two set of reactors were taken, First
set was of vermilters and another set was of geolter (devoid of
earthworms). Both were taken in triplicates and consisted of plastic
containers with a cross sectional dimension of 250 mm 200 mm
and a depth of 300 mm. The top layer was 50 mm thick matured ver-
micompost (worm-bed). Second, third and fourth layers comprised
of river bed material having size 68 mm (100 mm thick), 12 mm
(50 mm thick) and 1012.5 mm (50 mm thick) respectively. The
wastewater was applied from the top of the reactors using a peri-
staltic pump. For uniform distribution of wastewater a 12.7 mm
glass pipe with 1.5 mm diameter hole was used on the top of the
reactors. Fig. 1 shows the schematic diagram of the vermilter (VF)
and the geolter (GF) systems. Each of the vermilter was inocu-
lated with 150 earthworms (E. fetida) to achieve a stocking density
of 10,000 worms/cum of vermilter-bed. Each of the vermilter
and geolter were fed daily at HLRs of 1.5, 2, 2.5 and 3.0 m3 m2 d1
for 90 days.
2.2. Data collection and analysis
The collected efuent was analysed for biochemical oxygen
demand (BOD), chemical oxygen demand (COD), total organic car-
bon (TOC), nitrate nitrogen (NO3 -N), pH, total phosphate (TP),
total suspended solids (TSS) and total dissolve solids (TDS). All the
parameters were analysed according to the Standard Methods for
the examination of water and wastewater (APHA, 2005). Earth-
worm biomass was also monitored on the initial and nal day of
experiment.
The nal removal efciency was calculated as the percent
removal for each parameter, which was determined using the equa-
tion:
 Ce
 efcacy of vermiltration process as compared to geomicrobial sys-
R= 1 100
Ci
where Ci and Ce are the inuent and efuent concentrations
respectively in mg/l.
A sample of top layer from the vermilter bed was also col-
lected at the end of the run to analyse the characteristics of nal
vermicompost.
2.3. Statistical analysis
A paired sample t-test between vermiltration and geoltration
(without earthworm) unit was performed for each physico-
chemical parameter to analyse the differences. One-way analysis
of variance (ANOVA) was also preformed to measure the differ-
ence among different days for each physico-chemical parameter
of wastewater using SPSS statistical package (Window Version
14.0). The results reported in the study have signicant level (p)
less than 0.05.
2.4. Wastewater composition
The wastewater was prepared in the laboratory by dissolv-
ing molasses, urea and KH2 PO4 to give the ratio of COD/N/P as
300/30/1 (Seetha et al., 2010) such that it simulates actual domes-
tic wastewater of medium strength (Tchobanoglous et al., 2003).
The inuent had COD 472 18 mg/l, BOD 327 13 mg/l, BOD/COD
ratio 0.69 0.001, total solids (TS) 689 99 mg/l, total suspended
solids 289 106 mg/l, total organic carbon (TOC) 210 18 mg/l,
total nitrogen (TN) 48.9 10.6 mg/l, NH3 -N of 20 2.5 mg/l, total
phosphate 8.1 3.3 mg/l and pH of 7.1 0.08.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Performance of the lab-scale VF and GF at different HLRs
The variations in BOD removal at different HLRs are described
in Fig. 2. It can be seen from Fig. 2 that BOD of efuent was signi-
cantly low both in vermilter and geolter. In addition the removal
efciency was more in vermiler as compared to geolter signif-
icantly as shown in Table 1 (t-test: P < 0.001). The maximum BOD
removal observed in vermilter by 96% at HLR of 2.5 m3 m2 d1
while for geolter it was observed as 70%. This is due to sym-
biotic activity of earthworms and aerobic microbes to accelerate
and enhance the decomposition of organic matter (Loehr et al.,
1988; Tomar and Suthar, 2011; Rajpal et al., 2013) which shows the
(1) tem. At HLR of 3.0 m3 m2 d1 the removal was not effective. This
could be related to increased humidity and scouring of vermilter
which is not benecial for earthworm growth and the performance
of vermiltration process (Xing et al., 2010).
 T. Kumar et al. / Ecological Engineering 62 (2014) 7782 79

Fig. 2. BOD removal at different hydraulic loading rate.

Table 1
Chemical characteristics of outlet from vermilter and geolter at the end of process at HLR of 2.5 m3 m2 d1 .

Parameters Vermiltera Geoltera t-test (t-coefcient value) Signicance level

BOD 8 2.0 82 5.56 8.5507 p < 0.001

NO3 -N 45 2.1 24 3.53 23.4338 p < 0.001
TOC 30.5 1.83 78.7 2.54 10.2725 p = 0.004
TDS 72 12 305 23 6.9714 p < 0.001
TSS 29 8.54 60 14.7 24.5756 p < 0.001
TP 34.5 3.25 20 3.25 4.5779 p < 0.05
a
Mean concentration standard deviation of the physicochemical parameters.

Table 2 earthworms remove COD not as signicantly as the BOD but the
BOD/COD ratio for vermilter and geolter.
removal is much higher than geo-microbial system.
HLR (m3 m2 d1 ) Vermiltera Geoltera In vermilter, the nitrate nitrogen concentration was signi-
1.5 0.33 0.12 0.40 0.15 cantly higher (t-test: P < 0.001, Table 1) as compared to geolter
2.0 0.33 0.17 0.49 0.17 at different HLRs. The maximum increase in nitrate nitrogen con-
2.5 0.14 0.10 0.50 0.17 centration was observed by 45 2.1 mg/l at HLR of 2.5 m3 m2 d1
3.0 0.14 0.13 0.53 0.10 while in geolter it was obtained as 24 3.53 mg/l at the same HLR.
a
Mean concentration standard deviation of the physicochemical parameters. The nitrate nitrogen prole is given in Fig. 3. This is attributed
to mineralization of ammonia nitrogen into nitrate form. Bajsa
et al. (2003) has reported that earthworms secrete polysaccha-
The BOD/COD ratio at different HLRs is illustrated in Table 2. The rides, proteins, and other nitrogenous compounds. They mineralize
ratio in vermilter efuent was observed much lower as compared the nitrogen in the sewage to make it available to plants as
to initial characteristics of inuent. This could be due to the avail- nutrients. Recently, Wang et al. (2011) has also investigated that
ability of various enzymes in the gut of earthworms which helps in oxygen is available in abundance through the burrowing action
the degradation of those chemicals that cannot be decomposed in of earthworms which favours a microenvironment for aerobic
geo-microbial process. At HLR 2.5 m3 m2 d1 the minimum value nitrobacteria. The ammonia nitrogen is removed through rapid
of BOD/COD ratio was observed as 0.14 0.1. In vermiltration, adsorption by media and subsequently it is converted from ammo-
the BOD removal was more as compared to COD in same reactor. nia nitrogen into nitrate form through biological nitrication
This could be due to dependency of earthworms on the biodegrad- (Kadam et al., 2009). At higher loading rates earthworm cannot
able part of wastewater. Sinha et al. (2008) has also observed that get sufcient time for this conversion. So nitrate nitrogen was
80 T. Kumar et al. / Ecological Engineering 62 (2014) 7782
Fig. 3. Variation of nitrate nitrogen in efuent.
observed in less concentration at HLR of 3 m3 m2 d1 . The ammo-
nia nitrogen concentration in nal efuent was 2.7 0.42 mg/l in
vermilter while in geolter it was observed as 16.7 2.6 mg/l at
HLR of 2.5 m3 m2 d1 . The ammonia emission in vermilter is very
low that also indicates the nitricationdenitrication occurrence
(Luth et al., 2011; Li et al., 2008).
The total phosphate (TP) concentration in the efuent signi-
cantly increased (t-test: P < 0.001) at different HLRs of wastewater
in vermilter, as compared to geolter. The change in total
phosphate concentration with different HLRs is shown in Fig. 4.
The maximum increase in total phosphate was observed as
34.5 3.25 mg/l at 2.5 m3 m2 d1 . This increment is attributed
to the enzymatic and microbial action of earthworms. Activities
of earthworm and associated microbes in vermi-beds promote
rapid phosphate mineralization in the system causing increased
concentration of phosphate in the efuent (Hait and Tare, 2011).
As the phosphate is one of the key components for agriculture
point of view which showed the potential of vermiltration for the
treatment of wastewater.
Fig. 4. Variation of total phosphate in efuent.
Fig. 5. Change in TOC with different hydraulic loading rate.
In vermilter, total organic carbon (TOC) concentration in efu-
ent was signicantly lower (t-test: P = 0.004) as compared to
geolter at four different HLRs. Fig. 5 shows the TOC concentra-
tion at different HLRs. In vermilter, the maximum TOC removal
was observed by 85% at HLR of 2.5 m3 m2 d1 , while for geol-
ter it was observed as 62% at the same HLR. This could be due to
increased carbon consumption in metabolic activity as well as CO2
emission in the vermiltration process (Rajpal et al., 2012).
Total suspended solids (TSS) and total dissolved solids (TDS)
both were reduced during vermiltration signicantly (t-test:
P < 0.001) as compared to geolter. The maximum TDS removal in
vermilter was observed at HLR of 2.5 m3 m2 d1 by 82% while
in geolter it was observed as 56% at the same HLR. This could
be attributed to the ingestion of organic and inorganic solid parti-
cles in wastewater through earthworm which excrete them as ner
particles. These ner particles are further trapped in the voids of
vermilter and causes high removal efciency of TSS and TDS from
wastewater (Sinha et al., 2008). The TSS removal for vermilter was
observed by 90% while for geolter it was observed as 79% at the
HLR of 2.5 m3 m2 d1 . Fig. 6(a) and (b) shows the removal of TDS
and TSS at different HLRs in both vermilter and geolter. Various
physical, chemical and biological reactions take place in vermil-
tration process including the adsorption of molecules and ions,
oxidationreduction of organic matter, the behaviour of earth-
worms and their synergetic effects with microorganisms (Bouch
and Soto, 2004). At HLR 2.5 m3 m2 d1 , vermilter showed high-
est efcacy as compared to geolter. When the HLR increased to
3 m3 m2 d1 no signicant reduction was observed in TDS and TSS
as compare to HLR of 2.5 m3 m2 d1 this could be attributed to the
lack of availability of time to degrade the solids during vermiltra-
tion process but removal was more than the geolter.
3.2. Earthworm biomass
The changes in earthworms biomass in vermiltration process
at different HLRs illustrated in Fig. 7. At the end of the run, the
earthworm biomass increased signicantly (p < 0.05) with increase
in HLR up to 2.5 m3 m2 d1 , above which the biomass gets reduced.
This could be due to the high ow rate and high moisture content
affecting the performance of earthworms in the vermilter bed. The
increase in weight of earthworm biomass during the vermiltration
period varied between 7.4% and 20.7%. Overall, maximum growth
 T. Kumar et al. / Ecological Engineering 62 (2014) 7782 81

Fig. 6. (a) and (b) TDS and TSS removal at different HLR.

and total nitrogen concentration decreased in the vermicompost at

the end of the run. This again proved that the dissolution of organ-
ics took place from compost to wastewater. This period has been
considered as lag period only and not considered in present study.

4. Conclusion

From the present study, the vermiltration was found to be

suitable technique for highly efcient treatment technology for
wastewater. This is a good alternative for decentralized onsite
wastewater treatment. In this study the HLR of 2.5 m3 m2 d1 was
found optimum in vermilter for the respective test media (nat-
urally occurring river bed material). As the treated efuent and
vermicompost both meet the requirement for irrigation. Hence the
efuent can be used for irrigation and nal vermicompost can be
used as manure.
From the treatment view point, the BOD, TSS and TDS were
reduced by 96%, 90%, and 82% respectively at the optimum
hydraulic loading rate. In this system, no sludge was produced
and in contrast to this, the organic matter and solids present in
Fig. 7. Change in earthworm biomass. the wastewater were consumed by earthworms converting these
into value added vermicompost. This vermicompost can be used as
manure as it is having good content of nitrogen and phosphate.
of the earthworm biomass was observed at HLR 2.5 m3 m2 d1 ,
The treated efuent had higher value of nitrate and phosphate
which proves the better performance of riverbed material as a l-
which is best suited for sewage farming or horticulture. Moreover,
tering material in vermiltration process.
earthworms growth was excellent during the entire process that
proved the suitability of riverbed material as a ltering material in
3.3. Quality of vermicompost vermiltration process.

The initial and nal characteristic of vermicompost at different

Acknowledgement
HLR is illustrated in Table 3. The nal product of vermicompost
from the top layer was dark brown (towards blackish) in colour
Authors are thankful to Department of Science and Technology
and homogeneous at the end of run. At HLR 2.5 m3 m2 d1 , the TP
(DST), Government of India for providing nancial support for the
study.
Table 3
Characteristics of vermicompost at hydraulic loading rate 2.5 m3 m2 d1 .
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