Dr Shaon Ray Chaudhari
By Maitrayee Sangitrao :
Milk, one of the growing commodities of trade and everyday life, adds to waste water generation. For, per 1 liter milk processed results in generating 1.3 to 2.5 liters of wastewater. It also results in considerable addition to wastewater disposal costs. While the volume of milk processing is expected to increase, the demand has to be met with an efficient and sustainable approach. Dr Shaon Ray Chaudhari, Professor and Head of the Department of Microbiology, Tripura University that proposed a strategy for microbial conversion of dairy wastewater into biofertilisers. Speaking on ‘The Hitavada’, Dr Chaudhari highlighted the importance of wastewater management as a revenue generating and eco-friendly process. She said, “Such treatments are considered as burdens, due to energy consumption and high capital investment in land and physical infrastructure. Even, water treatment systems are a major source of Green House Gas emissions.” Looking at the newer methods of treating wastewater, the research proposed by Dr Chaudhari aims to turn the wastewater management into an eco-friendly industry.
As mentioned in the paper, the microbial conversion of dairy wastewater into biofertilisers takes about 16 hours of time as compared to any conventional conversion systems into place that takes more than 100 hours to treat wastewater. “Our approach of converting wastewater to biofertilisers is done in a single unit operations which has a yield enhancing ability. It is a microbial process for efficient bioconversion of un-amended dairy wastewater into biofertilisers within a biolfilm reactor under anoxic conditions. They have shown promising results in the cultivation of profitable cash crops. As a matter of fact, it has scaled up the process,” said Dr Chaudhari. Putting the research to practice, the biofertiliser enhanced yield in the case of mung bean, maize, and black gram unlike any other conventional biofertilisers, as per reports. “Despite numerous research groups working globally on dairy waste management, no similar approach to microbial conversion of wastewater to liquid biofertiliser in a single operation unit has been reported until now. If implemented worldwide, it is bound to make wastewater management into an eco-friendly industry,” she added.
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