• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.53 no.2
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• pp.141-154
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• 2020

The accidents of toxic chemical spill into rivers are increasing in recent years due to expansion of heavy industries in Korea. In order to respond to the chemical spills, accident response systems have been established for both main rivers and tributary rivers. However, since these accident response system adopted the water quality models imported from the foreign countries, it is difficult to acquire the model parameters and to calibrate and validate the water quality models. Therefore, this study developed a depth-averaged two-dimensional river water quality model to analyze the behavior of hazardous chemicals in rivers and proposed an efficient simulation execution framework by identifying the significant reaction mechanisms considering the characteristics of the toxic chemicals. The depth-averaged two-dimensional river water quality model CTM-2D was upgraded by adding reaction terms representing mechanisms of the adsorption, desorption, and volatilization of toxic chemicals. In order to verify the model, the analytical solution was compared with the numerical solution, and results showed that the error was less than 0.1%. In addition, the model was applied to a virtual scenario which is a water pollution accident at the confluence of the Nakdong River - Kumho River, and model results showed that an efficient simulation could be carried out by activating only significant reactions which were assessed by the sensitivity analysis.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.84-90
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• 2018

Chemical accidents occur in various forms, such as explosions, leaks, spills, and fires. In particular, chemical accidents caused by fires seriously affect the surrounding air environment due to soot, causing anxiety to the residents. Therefore, it is important to identify the causative substances quickly and examine the influence of air quality in the surrounding area. In this paper, proton transfer reaction-time of flight mass spectrometry(PTR-ToFMS) was used to identify the causative material in a fire and monitor the air quality in real time. This analyzer is capable of real-time analysis with a rapid response time without sample collection and pretreatment. In addition, it is suitable for quantitative and qualitative analysis of most volatile organic compounds with high hydrogen affinity, to identify the cause of fire and examine the influence of ambient air. In April 2018, when a local fire occurred, methanol, acetone, and methyl ethyl ketone were the main causative agents in PTR-ToFMS.

• Journal of Wetlands Research
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.75-85
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• 2005

The Construction of industrial complex areas means the increase of imperviousness rate and the increase of nonpoint pollutant emissions during a rainfall. Generally the retention basin can become the alternative for removing and controling these nonpoint pollutants. Recently Ministry of Environment are trying to change the purpose of retention basins from flooding control to nonpoint pollutant control. In order to propel the stormwater management program, administration plan of stormwater management is enacted in Spring, 2005. Hereafter, in a newly developing area, the best management practices should be established to control the nonpoint pollutant. Landuses of the research area are classified to the categories of the 1st manufacturing industry, metal industry, fiber and chemical product manufacturing industry, etc. Therefore, this research was performed to understand washed-off characteristics of stormwater and to suggest the controling method of nonpoint pollutants. The optimum capacity of the retention basin can be determined by analyzing the relationships among data of rainfall, runoff, washed-off pollutants from the areas. The rainfall analysis using the data of normal year, recent 2, 5 and 10 years shows that the 80% rainfall frequency was occurred on 10mm accumulated rainfall, but which is not considered the first flush effect. However, by considering the first flush effect, the appropriate treatment capacity of rainfall can be decreased to 4-5mm accumulated rainfall. Using the criteria, the optimum capacity of retention basin is determined to $12,000m^3$ in the research area. The washed-off nonpoint pollutant loading from the areas have beeb calculated to 435ton/yr for TSS, 238ton/yr for COD, 8,518kg/yr for TKN and 1,816kg/yr for TP. The mass of 78.3ton/yr for TSS, 20.4ton/yr for BOD, 128.6ton/yr for COD, 4.6ton/yr for TKN and 980kg/yr for TP can be reduced by constructing the retention basin. The sediment accumulation rate is also calculated by $6.53kg/m^2-hr$.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.111-124
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• 2003

Processes that cause immobilization of contaminants in soil are of great environmental importance because they may lead to a considerable reduction in the bioavailability of contaminants and they may restrict their leaching into groundwater. Previous investigations demonstrated that pollutants can be bound to soil constituents by either chemical or physical interactions. From an environmental point of view, chemical interactions are preferred, because they frequently lead to the formation of strong covalent bonds that are difficult to disrupt by microbial activity or chemical treatments. Humic substances resulting from lignin decomposition appear to be the major binding ligands involved in the incorporation of contaminants into the soil matrix through stable chemical linkages. Chemical bonds may be formed through oxidative coupling reactions catalyzed either biologically by polyphenol oxidases and peroxidases, or abiotically by certain clays and metal oxides. These naturally occurring processes are believed to result in the detoxification of contaminants. While indigenous enzymes are usually not likely to provide satisfactory decontamination of polluted sites, amending soil with enzymes derived from specific microbial cultures or plant materials may enhance incorporation processes. The catalytic effect of enzymes was evaluated by determining the extent of contaminants binding to humic material, and - whenever possible - by structural analyses of the resulting complexes. Previous research on xenobiotic immobilization was mostly based on the application of $^{14}$ C-labeled contaminants and radiocounting. Several recent studies demonstrated, however, that the evaluation of binding can be better achieved by applying $^{13}$ C-, $^{15}$ N- or $^{19}$ F-labeled xenobiotics in combination with $^{13}$ C-, $^{15}$ N- or $^{19}$ F-NMR spectroscopy. The rationale behind the NMR approach was that any binding-related modification in the initial arrangement of the labeled atoms automatically induced changes in the position of the corresponding signals in the NMR spectra. The delocalization of the signals exhibited a high degree of specificity, indicating whether or not covalent binding had occurred and, if so, what type of covalent bond had been formed. The results obtained confirmed the view that binding of contaminants to soil organic matter has important environmental consequences. In particular, now it is more evident than ever that as a result of binding, (a) the amount of contaminants available to interact with the biota is reduced; (b) the complexed products are less toxic than their parent compounds; and (c) groundwater pollution is reduced because of restricted contaminant mobility.

• Proceedings of KOSOMES biannual meeting
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• 2017.11a
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• pp.165-165
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• 2017

As marine chemical spill incidents increase, and damages caused by chemical spills become bigger and bigger, it is required to educate and train professional personnel for response to chemical spill incidents at sea. In this study, the education contents of domestic and foreign institutions for the training of specialists in response to marine chemical accidents were examined, and a comparative analysis of education and training contents was carried out in order to utilize it in the development of domestic education and training materials for HNS response personnel in Republic of Korea.

• Journal of Wetlands Research
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.80-89
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• 2017

Researches about NPS(Non-point Pollution Source) reduction have been widely carried out in recent years. A pilot channel-type constructed wetland (wet swale) was constructed in Rongyin area to treat stormwater generated from a green house agro-land of 22.7 ha. From 2006 to 2008, monitoring was conducted to evaluate its performance on the removal effect for organic pollutants as well as nutrients. Totally, sampling trips of 17 rainfall events were made and they covered most types of storm events in Korea. The channel-type constructed wetland have average removal efficiencies of 78.3~92.0%, 56.4~66.1%, 28.2~45.5% and 50.6~66.4% for SS, COD, TN and TP, respectively. According to four methods for estimating the removal efficiency, the average efficiencies of TSS, COD, TN and TP are 86.0%, 60.1%, 30.1% and 53.5%, respectively. From 2006 to 2008, annual efficiency improved due to infiltration potential increase. It was found that most of the pollutants removed in this channel type of wetland was particulate solids bound pollutants, which is assumed fact that it lacks of physico-chemical treatment conditions which are commonly observed in the retention type of constructed wetlands.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.1477-1488
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• 2014

Prevalent construction of impermeable pavements in urban areas causes diverse water-related environmental issues, such as lowering ground water levels and shortage of water supply for the living. In order to resolve such problems, a rainwater reservoir can be an effective and useful solution. The rainwater reservoir facilitates the hydrologic cycle in urban areas by temporarily retaining precipitation-runoff within a shallow subsurface layer for later use in a dry season. However, in order to use the stored water of precipitation-runoff, non-point source pollutants mostly retained in initial rainfall should be removed before being stored in the reservoir. Therefore, the purification system to filter out the non-point source pollutants is essential for the rainwater reservoir. The conventional soil filtration technology is well known to be able to capture non-point source pollutants in a economical and efficient way. This study adopted a sand filter layer (SFL) as a non-point source pollutant removal system in the rainwater reservoir, and conducted a series of lab-scale chamber tests and field tests to evaluate the pollutant removal efficiency and applicability of SFL. During the laboratory chamber experiments, three types of SFL with the different grain size characteristics were compared in the chamber with a dimension of $20cm{\times}30cm{\times}60cm$. To evaluate performance of the reservoir systems, the concentration of the polluted water in terms of TSS (Total Suspended Solids) and COD (Chemical Oxygen Demand) were measured and compared. In addition, a reduction in hydraulic conductivity of SFL due to pollutant clogging was indirectly estimated. The optimum SFL selected through the laboratory chamber experiments was verified on the in-situ rainwater reservoir for field applicability.

• Ecology and Resilient Infrastructure
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.193-199
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• 2017

In this study, changes of soil properties including soil texture, specific surface area, organic matter content, pH, cation exchange capacity and exchangeable cations content were investigated in response to strong acid or base accident. The properties changed significantly when the soil reacted with 10 M HCl or 1 M NaOH (i.e., when one gram of soil received 50 and 5 mmol of HCl or NaOH), respectively. When the soil reacted with 10 M HCl or 1 M NaOH solution, soil texture changed from sandy loam to loamy sand and specific surface areas decreased from $5.84m^2/g$ to 4.85 and $1.92m^2/g$, respectively. The soil organic matter content was reduced from 3.23% to 0.96 and 0.44%, and the soil pH changed from 5.05 to 2.35 and 10.65, respectively. The cation exchange capacity decreased from 10.27 cmol/kg to 4.52 and 5.60 cmol/kg, respectively. Especially, high concentrations of $Al^{3+}$ or $Na^+$ were observed in acidic or basic spills, respectively, which is likely to cause toxicity to terrestrial organisms. The results suggest that restoration of soil properties, as well as soil remediation, needs to be carried out to maintain the soil function in chemical spill sites.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.33 no.2 s.95
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• pp.158-165
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• 2007

본 연구는 근원에 따른 용존 유기물의 특성을 평가하기 위해 하천수, 호소수, 하수 2차 처리 유출수의 자연수 및 Aldrich, Wako 사에서 공급된 휴믹산을 대상으로 분자량 분포에 따른 물리 화학적인 수질 특성, 생분해도, 소독, 부산물의 생성 등을 고찰하였다. SUVA를 이용해서 자연수의 생분해 가능성을 평가한 결과 호소수, 하수, 하천수 순으로 예측되었으며 이는, 실제 생분해도 실험 결과와 유사하였다 생분해 반응 중 저분자 영역대의 용존 유기물은 점차 감소하였고 반면에 고분자 영역대의 용존 유기물은 증가하였다. SMP는 전체 용존 유기물의 0.7-5.5%정도 관찰되었으며 고분자 물질을 많이 함유한 시료에서 높게 나타났다. THM 생성은 대체로 고분자 물질이 높을수록 증가하였으며 THMFP도 Wako 휴믹산을 제외한 샘플에서 이와 유사한 경향을 나타냈다.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.26 no.6B
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• pp.689-694
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• 2006

The system performance of a bioactive foam reactor (BFR), that consists of a foam column using a surfactant and a biodegradation basin containing suspended bacteria, was investigated for the treatment of gaseous toluene or a mixture of four volatile organic compounds (VOCs, benzene, toluene, p-xylene, and styrene). Overall, the BFR achieved stable VOC removal efficiencies, indicating that it can be used as a potential alternative over conventional packed-bed biofilters. Furthermore, a dynamic loading test showed that relatively constant removal was maintained at the elevated loading due to a high mass transfer rate in the foam column. However, as the inlet concentration of VOCs increased, a portion of the VOCs mass-transferred to the liquid phase was stripped out from the biodegradation basin, resulting in a decrease in the overall removal efficiency. In the BFR, the removal efficiency of the individual VOC was mainly determined depending on the biodegradation rate (styrene > toluene > benzene > p-xylene), rather than the mass transfer rate. Consequently, increases in the microbial activity and the volume of the basin could improve the overall performance of the BFR system. Further investigation on microbial activity and community dynamics is required for the BFR when subjected to high loadings of VOC mixtures.