TECHNOLOGY WASTEWATER TREATMENT USING METHOD OF THE VERMIFILTRATION

The problem of water sources protection and access to drinking water is an important priority for the entire world community. The discharge of untreated or insufficiently treated wastewater into open water bodies leads to a violation of their ecological balance, the complete death of aerobic organisms and the development of decay processes. Therefore, ensuring effective wastewater purification from pollution is a task of current interest. Perhaps, among the systems currently used for wastewater treatment, biological methods occupy the most important place. However, the issue of such methods is the increased technogenic load on the environment due to sufficiently large volumes of excess activated sludge, which leads to the necessity of using equipment for its processing and storage and does not allow the creation of a closed technological cycle for wastewater treatment. The new technology of biological wastewater treatment through vermifiltration, that is, with the use of earthworms, is devoid of all the above disadvantages and can be used to treat domestic and industrial wastewater. The technology is based on the ability of earthworms to work as "biofilters". They absorb organic and inorganic pollutants from wastewater, digest them and release them as their excrement (coprolites) into the environment. With such processing of wastewater, takes place the cleaning, disinfection, detoxication of the water, as well as the transformation of organic and inorganic components into an organo-mineral fertilizer - vermicompost and earthworm biomass, which can serve as a raw material for the feed and pharmaceutical industries