Sustainable management of an invasive and noxious weed Parthenium using rotary drum composter

Shalu Rawat^1*, Danish Kaleem¹, Sumit Kumar Swarnkar², Prakhar Bajpai², Jiwan Singh¹

¹Department of Environmental Science, Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Lucknow-226025, India

²Department of Civil Engineering, UIET, Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Lucknow-226025, India

ARTICLE INFOR: Received: 12 April 2023; Revised: 21 April 2023; Accepted: 22 April 2023

CORRESPONDING AUTHOR: E-mail: shalurawat200@gmail.com (S. Rawat)

Cite this article: Rawat, S., Kaleem, D., Swarnkar, S.K., Bajpai, P., Singh, J., 2023. Sustainable management of an invasive and noxious weed Parthenium using rotary drum composting. J. Appl. Sci. Innov. Technol. 2 (1), 25-32.

Highlights

• Rotatory drum composting of Parthenium weed was performed for 20 days.
• Effect of three different ratios of waste on composting was studied.
• The profiling of temperature, pH, EC, VS, sCOD, MC, ash content was done for 20 days.
• The thermophilic stage was achieved in 4-5 days in all the three runs.
• Third run with ratio of weed, cow dung, saw dust 6:3:1 showed best results.

Abstract

Sustainable solid waste management is the need of time and composting is one of the most effective methods to manage organic waste. In this study, the composting of Parthenium weed has been done for 20 days in combination with cow dung and sawdust in three different ratios. The profiling of different physical and chemical parameters was done for 20 days including temperature, pH, soluble chemical oxygen demand (sCOD), and electrical conductivity (EC) along with moisture content (MC), volatile solid (VS) and ash content. Maximum temperature (55-57˚C) in all the three temperature was achieved in initial 4-5 days. EC, MC, and sCOD showed a decreasing trend from 0 to 20 day. The concentration of macronutrient was found increasing with increasing composting time and maximum concentration of Na (10.16 g/Kg), Ca (27.68 g/Kg) and K (11.72 g/Kg) was found in run C, in which highest amount of cattle manure was added. After 20 days of composting, the morphological and structural composition of the final product and initial feedstock mixture was compared through different analytical techniques that suggested decomposition of weed.

Keywords: Parthenium, composting, physico-chemical parameters, solid waste, waste management.

Scope: Environmental Engineering & Sciences

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