Effect of plant growth on dehydration rates and microbial populations in sewage biosolids

The high water content of sewage biosolids makes them expensive to transport. Two experiments were done to see if it was practical to use transpiration by plants as a low cost method to dehydrate biosolids. (i) To assess biosolids as a growth-medium for plants, maize, beans, pumpkin, forage oats and an annual ryegrass were grown in pots of fresh biosolids. Plant growth varied between species and potassium deficiency was found to be a limiting factor for barley. Roots were slow to penetrate anoxic biosolids in the bottom of the pots. (ii) Dehydration rates were measured in 30 litre boxes of biosolids from two different sources. Boxes were planted with maize or beans, or kept fallow. Despite the high (73–83%) initial water content of the biosolids, plants were susceptible to wilting on warm days which suggested that a significant proportion of the water in biosolids is not freely available to plants. Shrinkage caused a major reduction in biosolids volume in both experiments. When change in volume of the biosolids residue was accounted for, there was a 56% average water loss in planted treatments and 34% water loss in the fallow treatment. This indicates that planting may have some potential as a technique to accelerate dehydration of biosolids. Water contents were not reduced sufficiently to influence biosolids microbial populations.