Fly Ash Amendment for Sustainable Agriculture through Vermicomposting

Abstract

The process of coal combustion for energy production in thermal power plants (TPPs) generates huge amount of Fly Ash (FA) is one of a major source of environmental pollution. FA is considered as a serious pollutant throughout the globe from two decades. Safe disposal is the major concern of the century under the management and utilization of FA. Various conventional methods of FA disposal leads to landfill and contamination of the ground water. FA contains plant nutrients for enhancing agriculture production but it still contains heavy toxic metals. Recycling of FA is necessary to convert toxic metals with increasing of NPK content for enhancing agriculture yields. Researchers are paying attention for remediation of FA by using biological methods. Vermitechnology is an active and faster method for converting heavy metal toxic content of FA into organic manure by the action of certain species of earthworm. Biologically modified FA is suitable for agricultural application. The present review studies was done including several papers that correlates with the use of FA with it’s importance, benefits and scope of remediation by using different species of earthworm. Conversion of toxic metals to organic manure adding with NPK content due to the biological  activity of earthworm were recorded as per literature survey with an evidence of sustainable technique is vermicomposting.