Coal fly ash utilization in agriculture: its potential benefits and risks

Abstract

Over the past few decades there has been avid interest in developing the strategies for the utilization of Fly ash (FA). Major foci have been on its agricultural application. It is often economical to use FA as a soil amendment. The potential of FA as a resource material in agriculture is due to its specific physical properties like's texture, water holding capacity, bulk density, pH etc., and contains almost all the essential plant nutrients. It can be used as in soil that cannot substitute the chemical fertilizers or organic manure it can be used in combination with these to get additional benefits in terms of improvement in soil physical characteristics, increased yields etc. The amount and method of FA application in soil would vary with the type of soil, the crop, grown, the prevailing agro climatic condition and also with the FA characteristics. Although, as an input material FA has many benefits for agriculture applications like, improvement of nutrient deficiency, effectively control various pests infesting etc., in contrast FA also contains number of toxic heavy metals and also have natural radioactivity materials in it. Therefore, proper attention should be given on some important areas related to FA utilization such as long term studies of impact of FA on soil health, heavy metal uptake, plant physiology and growth, crop quality, and continuous monitoring on the soil characteristics. While using FA in agriculture problem of heavy metal toxicity and leaching due to excess dose should also be kept in mind.

Vermicomposting of coal fly ash using epigeic and epi-endogeic earthworm species: nutrient dynamics and metal remediation

“…FA has great potentiality in agriculture and is quite economical to use as a soil amendment. 3 FA is a good source of essential plant nutrients like Ca, Mg, S, Si, Al, Fe, and Na that are bene-cial for plant growth 4 but it consists of certain heavy elements like Fe, Mn, As, Cr, Zn, Pb, Ni, Ba, Sr and V, some of which are of environmental concern even at low concentrations. 5 Thus, the major constraints associated with the use of FA in agricultural ecosystem is the low availability of the nutrient elements basically N, P, K and lower rate of degradation of FA aer application in soils.…”

The Application of Computer and Its Influence in Coal Quality Testing

“…Figure 1.The overall frame of coal quality detection system Fast float chamber computer lab monitor computer centered server (database server) an internal LAN, testing machine will according to the original test data acquisition, analysis, processing, printing; After the local area network (LAN) uploaded to the laboratory monitor computer server, collecting and processing; Each user can make its designated jurisdictions through WEB page (WEB server) for a variety of testing data results query. Furthermore, it provides external data interface, can be under the precondition of authorization data import plant-level dedicated database information management system, so that each user data query by plant-level information management system for test [5].…”

Assessment of biotransfer and bioaccumulation of cadmium, lead and zinc from fly ash amended soil in mustard–aphid–beetle food chain

“…The agricultural use of fly ash is endorsed due to the presence of many nutrient elements essential for plant growth (Singh et al, 2010). However, fly ash also contains a variety of potentially hazardous heavy metals like Cd, Pb and Zn (Gallardo et al, 2006).…”