• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.323-329
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• 2007

There is no certain definition about advanced drinking water treatment but it is generally known as activated carbon process, membrane process or ozone process which can remove non-conventional pollutants such as taste and odor compounds, and micro-pollutants. There are more than 20 processes related to activated carbon as adsorber or biological activated carbon in Korea. The saturated carbon by pollutants can be reused by reactivation. However, the effect of reactivation on activated carbon is not well-understood in terms of changing physical properties of carbon to adsorption capacity of natural organic matter (NOM). In this study, the effects of reactivation on physical properties of activated carbon were investigated by isotherm and breakthrough of NOM. Ash content was increased from 8% to 13.3%. Iodine number is commonly used as an indicator for performance of reactivation. The iodine number was decreased about 20% after reactivating twice. The degree of reactivation can be evaluated by not only iodine number but also apparent density.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.8-15
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• 2024

In this study, nitrogen plasma treatment was performed in 5, 10, and 15 minutes to improve the tetracycline adsorption performance of activated carbon. All nitrogen plasma-treated activated carbons showed improved tetracycline adsorption compared to untreated activated carbons. The nitrogen functional groups in activated carbon lead to chemisorption with tetracycline via π-π interactions and hydrogen bonding. In particular, in the nitrogen plasma treatment at 80 W and 50 kHz, the activated carbon treated for 10 minutes had the best adsorption performance. At this time, the nitrogen content on the surface of the activated carbon was 2.03% and the specific surface area increased to 1,483 m²/g. As a result, nitrogen plasma treatment of activated carbon improved its physical and chemical adsorption capabilities. In addition, since the adsorption experimental results were in good agreement with the Langmuir isotherm and pseudo-second order model, it was determined that the adsorption of tetracycline on the nitrogen plasma-treated activated carbon was dominated by chemical adsorption through a monolayer. As a result, nitrogen plasma-treated activated carbon can be used as an adsorbent to efficiently remove tetracycline from water due to the synergistic effect of physical adsorption and proactive chemical adsorption.

• Biotechnology and Bioprocess Engineering:BBE
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.31-37
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• 2002

This paper was investigated to clarify the possibility of a biodegradation of materials adsorbed on different porous granular-activated carbons (GACs) such as coal-& coconut-based GAC. Total organic carbon, humic substance and ammonia were used to compare their removal efficiencies. The objective of this study is to determine the adsorption capacity of bioregenerated GAC. When raw water reacted with chloride, the yield of THMs increased as a function of the input amount of chloride. The formation of trihalomethanes (THMs) was investigated in water treated with chlorine when humic acid was used as THM precursor. As the input amount of chloride in raw water increased by two or five-fold to remove the $NH_3$, the chloroform of the THMs significantly increased also five or ten-fold. It was found that the chloroform was significantly removed by the treatment of biological activated carbon (BAG) in comparison with the ozone treatment, and the removal efficiency of THMs in coal-typed GAC was $10-30\%$ better than coconut-typed GAC due to the biological degradation on the surface of the activated carbons.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.7 no.6
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• pp.477-493
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• 2016

Immediate use of activated carbon incorporated polysulfone membrane application for dye separation was reported in this work. Dimethylformamide (DMF) was used as the solvent for the membrane preparation. The membrane thus prepared were characterized in terms of surface morphology, ATR-FTIR, AFM, experimental results as membrane performance. The resultant nanofiltration (NF) membranes were tested with Congo red dye concentration 200 mg/L. The water permeability was found to be considerably higher than that reported in literature. Experimental results show that the real rejection of the Congo red is 99.57% over the transmembrane pressure 100 psi using 30% activated carbon incorporated membrane. Prepared NF membranes shows the corresponding permeates fluxes were $40Lm^{-2}h^{-1}$ to $82Lm^{-2}h^{-1}$ with different activated carbon percentage incorporated in polysulfone membrane. The present study demonstrated that dye rejection enhanced NF may be a feasible method for the dye wastewater treatment. The overall observations thus indicated that toxic residual dyes can be appreciably separated from the membrane technology, provided that the accompanying polymeric membrane, activated carbon as binding agents and the process parameter levels are astutely selected.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.11 no.10
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• pp.1097-1101
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• 2002

Activated carbon is amorphous and its intraparticle pores are well developed. Thus it has high adsorption capabilities and catalytic effect, and is utilized in many areas of industries such as food processing. In recent years, the demand of activated carbon has been increased to solve the environmental problems-waste treatment and removal of poisonous gas. Therefore, in this study an activated carbon was made using the waste and then the industrial characteristics of the produced activated carbon were investigated. The result showed that the carbonization yield was decreased when carbonization temperature was increased from 400 to $600^{\circ}C$ and that the optimal carbonization temperature was $500^{\circ}C$. The optimal concentration of NaOH for removing ash in the raw sample was 1~2N. The iodine adsorption of activated carbon using waste sample at $500^{\circ}C$ carbonization was 1204.28mg/g. The activation result of carbonization sample showed that the optimal activation condition was the carbonization at $500^{\circ}C$ and the activation at $800^{\circ}C$. So the production of activated carbon was thought to be possible, reused as resource, and decreased the environmental pollution.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.15 no.7
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• pp.659-667
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• 2006

This research aims at applicability of adsorption process in order to satisfy the restricted Effluent Quality Standards for dyeing wastewater. The dyeing wastewater treated by biological process with carrier imbedded microorganisms was directly applied to the activated carbon adsorption in Process A, The dyeing wastewater treated by Fenton oxidation for the effluent of biological process was applied to the adsorption in Process B. It was found that the optimum conditions of adsorption with granular activated carbon are $20^{\circ}C$ and 120 minutes for the batch experiment. Langmuir equation was fitted better than Freundlich equation to the experimental data. The breakthrough time of adsorption column was determined by color rather than $COD_{Mn}$ for both Process A and Process B. The results revealed that the breakthrough time of adsorption for two processes was extended by the treatment of Fenton oxidation for dyeing wastewater treated by biological treatment than the direct application of dyeing wastewater treated by the biological treatment. Adsorption process can be applied in order to meet the restricted Effluent Quality Standards for dyeing wastewater.

• Carbon letters
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.131-136
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• 2010

Propellant waste was impregnated on the surface of activated carbon fiber and heat-treated at different temperature to introduce newly developed functional groups on the ACF surface. Functional groups of nitrogen and oxygen such as pyridine, pyridone, pyrrol, lacton and carboxyl were newly introduced on the surface of modified activated carbon fiber. The porosity, specific surface area, and morphology of those modified ACFs were changed as increasing the heat-treated temperature from 200 to $500^{\circ}C$. The optimum heat-treatment temperature was suggested to $500^{\circ}C$, because lower temperature given rise to the decrease of specific surface area and higher temperature resulted in the decrease of weight loss. Propellant waste can be used as an useful surface modifier to porous carbons.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.285-292
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• 2014

Commercial activated-carbon used as the electrode material of an electric double-layer capacitor (EDLC) was posttreated with various acids and alkalis to increase its capacitance. The carbon samples prepared were then heat-treated in order to control the amount of acidic functional groups formed by the acid treatments. Coin-type EDLC cells with two symmetric carbon electrodes were assembled using the prepared carbon materials and an organic electrolyte. The electrochemical performance of the EDLC was measured by galvanostatic charge-discharge, cyclic voltammetry, and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. Among the various activated carbons, the carbon electrodes (CSsb800) prepared by the treatments of coconutshell-based carbon activated with NaOH and $H_3BO_5$, and then heat treated at $800^{\circ}C$ under a flow of nitrogen gas, showed relatively good electrochemical performance. Although the specific-surface-area of the carbon-electrode material ($1,096m^2/g$) was less than that of pristine activated-carbon ($1,122m^2/g$), the meso-pore volume increased after the combined chemical and heat treatments. The specific capacitance of the EDLC increased from 59.6 to 74.8 F/g (26%) after those post treatments. The equivalent series resistance of EDLC using CSsb800 as electrode was much lower than that of EDLC using pristine activated carbon. Therefore, CSsb800 exhibited superior electrochemical performance at high scan rates due to its low internal resistance.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.32 no.1 s.88
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• pp.71-76
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• 2006

Treatment performance and microbial community structure were investigated in water-soluble cutting oil treatment process using biological activated carbon. DOC removal in BACI column at $15^{\circ}C$ was higher than at $25^{\circ}C$, but those of BAC3 column after 60days was high at$25^{\circ}C$. Also, quinone content of first-step reactors at $25^{\circ}C$ and $15^{\circ}C$ was much the same, but those of the third-step reactor at $25^{\circ}C$ was higher than at $15^{\circ}C$. The dominant type of two apparatus was ubquinone (UQ)-l 0 followed by UQ-8. Menaquinones were detected from $25^{\circ}C$ apparatus and effluent. This suggested that DOC removal at $25^{\circ}C$ was advanced degradation by attached microorganisms on the activated carbon surface. The DOC removal in long-term activated carbon apparatus increased with going in BAC3 column. This indicated the influent of POC was a result of DOC removal efficiency decrease. Integrated DOC removal from start point in experiment to break point and quinone content were showed a tendency of increasing with going last-step activated carbon apparatus. Therefore, the biological activated carbon apparatus used by this study was effective treatment process in contaminated groundwater by water-soluble cutting oil.

• Carbon letters
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.103-107
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• 2004

The atmospheric pressure plasma treatments ($Ar/O_2$ and $Ar/N_2$) of activated carbon fibers (ACFs) were carried out to introduce hydrophilic functional groups on carbon surfaces in order to enhance the hydrogen chloride gas (HCl) adsorption. Surface properties of the ACFs were determined by XPS and SEM. $N_2$/77 K adsorption isotherms were investigated by BET and D-R (Dubinin-Radushkevich) plot methods. The HCl removal efficiency was confirmed by HCl detecting tubes (range:1~40 or 40~1000 ppm). As experimental results, it was found that all plasma-treated ACFs showed the decrease in the pore volume, but the HCl removal efficiency showed higher level than that of the untreated ACFs. This result indicated that the plasma treatments led to the conformation of hydrophilic functional groups on the carbon surfaces, resulting in the increase of the interaction between the ACFs and HCl gas.