• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.48 no.1
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• pp.103-109
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• 2010

Anaerobic digestion has been widely used for the treatment of sludge, which is generated from the municipal and industrial wastewater treatment, for its volume reduction and methane production. Many researches on sludge pre-treatment have been carried out in order to enhance the performance of anaerobic digestion by increasing the hydrolysis of sludge which is the rate limiting step of anaerobic digestion. In this study, the effect of pre-treatment on sludge hydrolysis(solubilization), methane production and sludge reduction by anaerobic digestion after thermal, ultrasonic, and thermal-alkali sludge treatment were compared. Thermal-alkali treatment showed 67 and 70% solubilization with municipal and industrial wastewater sludge, respectively, while ultrasonic treatment and thermal treatment gave similar solubilization efficiency of 40% or more. Methane content of the anaerobic digestion gas reached 45~70% and pretreated sludge gave higher methane content than the control sludge. Methane production of thermal, ultrasonic, and thermal-alkali pre-treatment gave 2.6, 2.7, 3.5 times of municipal control sludge and 3.5, 4.1, 4.2 times of industrial control sludge, respectively. Sludge reduction of pre-treated sludge after anaerobic digestion gave 5~19% point higher than that of control sludge, and thermal-alkali treatment showed higher reduction efficiency than thermal and ultrasonic treatment. The results proved that pre-treatment contributed significantly not only for the methane production but also for the cost reduction of sludge treatment and disposal, and thermal-alkali treatment gave the best performance for the sludge treatment.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.613-619
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• 2018

In this study, various influent sludge pre-treatment methods and the internal recirculation of thickened sludge from effluents using a liquid/solid separation unit were adopted to investigate their effects on the sludge digestion and methane production in a combined mesophilic anaerobic and thermophilic aerobic sludge digestion process. A lab-scale combined sludge digestion process was operated during 5 phases using different feed sludge pre-treatment strategies. In phase 1, the feed sludge was pre-treated with a thermal-alkaline method. In contrast, in phases 2, 3 and 4, the internal recirculation of thickened sludge from the effluent and thermal-alkaline, thermal, and alkaline pre-treatment (7 days) were applied to the combined process. In phase 5, the raw sludge without any pre-treatment was used to the combined process. With the feed sludge pre-treatment and internal recirculation, the experimental results indicated that the volatile suspended solid (VSS) removal was drastically increased from phases 1 to 4. Also, the methane production rate with the thermal-alkaline pre-treatment and internal recirculation was significantly improved, showing an increment to 285 mL/L/day in phase 2. Meanwhile, the VSS removal and methane production in phase 5 were greatly decreased when the raw sludge without any pre-treatment was applied to the combined process. Considering all together, it was concluded that the combined process with the thickened sludge recirculation and thermal-alkaline pre-treatment can be successfully employed for the highly efficient sewage sludge reduction and methane gas production.

• Journal of the Korea Organic Resources Recycling Association
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.43-52
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• 2013

In this study, various influent sludge pre-treatment methods were adopted to investigate their effects on the sludge digestion and methane production in combined mesophilic anaerobic and thermophilic aerobic sludge digestion process. A lab-scale sewage sludge digestion process was operated during 4 phases using different feed sludge pre-treatment strategies. In phase 1, feed sludge was supplied without any pre-treatment. In contrast, in phases 2, 3 and 4, thermal, thermal-alkaline and long time alkaline treatment (7 days) were applied to influent sludge, respectively. With sludge pre-treatment, TCOD removal was drastically increased from 44% to 76% from phases 1 to 4, respectively. Also, pre-treatment of feed sludge significantly improved the methane production rate of MAD, showing an increment from 101 to 165-256mL/L/day. Meanwhile, TCOD removal and methane production at phase 4 were not increased, compared to those at phase 3. Based on the experimental results, it was concluded that pre-treatment of feed sludge significantly increases the efficiency of sludge digestion and thermal-alkaline method was the most effective method among the pre-treatment methods examined.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.71-78
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• 2015

This study was performed to optimize the integrated thermal-alkali pre-treatment of flotation scum for the enhanced biodegradability. The optimum conditions of the integrated thermal-alkali pre-treatment were obtained using response surface methodology. The disintegration degree of carbohydrate (69.2%) and protein (57.3) were estimated under the optimum conditions. Although the optimum conditions were different, the disintegration degrees were similarly. A fermentative hydrogen batch test was conducted to evaluate the hydrogen production from scum with and/or without. The maximum hydrogen production from scum with pre-treatment was of 0.64 mol H2/mol hexoseadded, which about 1.4 times higher than without pre-treatment.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.183-192
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• 2015

Response surface methodology (RSM) based on a Box-Behnken Design (BBD) was applied to optimize the thermal-alkaline pre-treatment operating conditions for anaerobic digestion of flotation scum in food waste leachate. Three independent variables such as thermal temperature, NaOH concentration and reaction time were evaluated. The maximum methane production of 369.2 mL $CH_4/g$ VS was estimated under the optimum conditions at $62.0^{\circ}C$, 10.1% NaOH and 35.4 min reaction time. A confirmation test of the predicted optimum conditions verified the validity of the BBD with RSM. The analysis of variance indicated that methane production was more sensitive to both NaOH concentration and thermal temperature than reaction time. Thermal-alkaline pretreatment enhanced the improvement of 40% in methane production compared to the control experiment due to the effective hydrolysis and/or solubilization of organic matters. The fractions with molecular weight cut-off of scum in food waste leachate were conducted before and after pre-treatment to estimate the behaviors of organic matters. The experiment results found that thermal-alkaline pre-treatment could reduce the organic matters more than 10kD with increase the organic matters less than 1kD.

• Analytical Science and Technology
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.403-409
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• 2005

Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons(PAHs) contamination arises from several sources including processing of food(smoking, direct drying, cooking) and environmental contamination of air, water, or soil, the later being considered as the most important. In this study, to establish the analytical method for some PAHs[benzo(a)anthracene, chrysene, benzo(b)fluoranthene, benzo(k)fluoranthene, benzo(a)pyrene, dibenzo(a,h)anthracene, benzo(g,h,i)perylene, indeno(1,2,3-c,d)pyrene] in fish, alkali digestion time, extraction solvents, elution volume of florisil cartridge for clean-up have been optimized. The methodology involved saponification and extraction with n-hexane, clean-up on Sep-Pak florisil cartridges and determination by HPLC/FLD(High Performance Liquid Chromatography/Fluorescence Detector). Overall method recoveries for 8 PAHs spiked into these products ranged from 90 to 106%.

• Journal of the Korea Organic Resources Recycling Association
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.90-98
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• 2001

The slow degradation rate of sewage sludge in anaerobic digesters is due to the rate limiting step of sludge hydrolysis. Therefore, the pre-treatment process had been carried out using acidic(pH 1.5, 3, 4, 5) and alkaline(pH9, 10, 13), thermal(50, 100, 150, $200^{\circ}C$) and ultrasonic treatment(400W, 20kHz, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 50, 60min). In the best conditions of each treatment, the SCOD ratio(%) of treated/untreared samples were increased 102% in acid(pH5), 986% in alkali(pH13), 959% in thermal($200^{\circ}C$) and 1123% in ultrasonic(35min) treatment. As the result, the ultrasonic treatment was most effective, followed by alkali, thermal, acidic treatment. In the effects of total gas productivity, the thermal($200^{\circ}C$) pretreatment was the highest, followed by thermal($150^{\circ}C$), ultrasonic(90min), alkaline(pH9) and ultrasonic(50min).

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.409-415
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• 2015

This study was performed to optimize the integrated anaerobic digestion (AD) and microbial electrolysis cells (MECs) for the enhanced hydrogen production. The optimum operational conditions of integrated AD and MECs were obtained using response surface methodology. The optimum substrate concentration and operational pH were 10 g/L and 6.8, respectively. In the confirm test, 1.43 mol $H_2/mol$ hexose was achieved, which was 2.5 times higher than only AD. After 40 to 60 hour at seeding, the volatile fatty acids (VFAs) in reactor of AD were not changed. However the VFAs of reactor of AD-MECs were reduced by 61.3% (acetate: 76.4%, butyrate: 50.0%, lactate: 55.0%).