Vermifiltration as a sustainable natural treatment technology for the treatment and reuse of wastewater: A review

With increasing urbanization and industrialization, the scarcity of freshwater is becoming rampant. To counteract this, authorities all over the world are forced to consider the treatment and reuse of the wastewater produced by either industries or domestic units. After an extensive literature survey, vermifiltration coupled with/without macrophyte has been identified as one of the best sustainable, natural and eco-friendly technology for the treatment and reuse of wastewater. Till date, it has been successfully applied for treating domestic wastewater. However, the results from very limited industrial applications are also encouraging and proving its worth for industrial wastewater remediation. The present review on vermifiltration deals with the mechanisms involved and its current status for the remediation and reutilisation of the effluents generated from domestic and industrial premises. The review successfully identifies and explicitly discusses the mechanisms involved in the vermifiltration. The review exhaustively discusses the performance of vermifiltration and identifies the factors contributing to the performance of vermifiltration, which could be of help in designing of the field scale vermifilter based treatment plant. The review identifies the limitations associated with the vermifiltration and suggests possible alternatives, aimed to improve its performance and applicability. The aim of this review is to bring the attention of prospective researchers to study each and every aspect related to the vermifiltration so that it may be adopted as a reliable and dependable technology for the remediation of several industrial effluents meeting the concept of "Zero discharge".