EXPERIMENTAL STUDY ON PHYSICOCHEMICAL PROPERTIES OF COMPOST BY PARTIAL REPLACEMENT OF ORGANIC MATTER WITH DAIRY SLUDGE

Organic wastes are wastes that are easily biodegradable. These wastes are produced from many sources such as agricultural waste, market waste, kitchen waste, urban solid food wastes and municipal solid waste. The main objective of the present study is to decompose the organic matter along with dairy sludge with different ratios through the Aerobic composting process, analyze the various controlling parameters during the process, test the physicochemical parameters of finished compost and compare it with the standards prescribed by AP Horticulture Department and to pick optimum dairy sludge and vegetative matter ratio and the benefits of this project were also discussed. In this study dairy sludge along with organic matter in four different ratios like 100% vegetative matter,40:60, 50:50, 60:40 was mixed for 15 days and allowed to decomposed for 45 more days and the finished compost physicochemical parameters were analyzed. Results from this study were compared with standards set for compost by AP horticulture department and the results of this study have met Standards fixed by Horticulture department. Although all the compost samples satisfied the required standards fixed by AP Horticulture department in terms of all physicochemical parameters sample 3 is found to best with dairy sludge to vegetative matter ratio of 50:50 was found to be best with Moisture content 20.91%, pH 7.4, EC 3.5dsm-1, Organic Carbon 22%, Nitrogen 1.6%, Phosphorus 0.78%, Potassium 0.91%, C:N ratio 13.75:1, Zinc 67.8 ppm, Iron 1420 ppm, Copper 14.20 ppm, and Manganese 31 ppm. In Sangam dairy an average of 600 KLD Wastewater was treated per day with assumed consistency of sludge as 1% and 120 mg/L suspended solids present in Wastewater and thereby leading to annual generation of 1248 ton of compost which generates an annual revenue of 62,40,000/- and an annual profit of about 50 lakhs excluding construction operation and maintenance costs.