• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.433-441
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• 2021

The aim of this study was to optimize the ozonation and ceramic membrane integrated process for greywater reclamation. The integrated process is a repeated sequential process of filtration and backwash with the same ceramic membrane. Also, this study used ozone and oxygen gas for the backwashing process to compare backwashing efficiency. The study results revealed that the optimum filtration and backwash time for the process was 10 minutes each when comparing the filtrate flow and membrane recovery rate. The integrated process was operated at three different operating conditions with i) 10 minutes for filtration and 10 minutes for ozonation, ii) 10 minutes for filtration and 10 minute for oxygen aeration, and iii) continuous filtration without any aeration for synthetic greywater. The integrated process with ozone backwashing could produce 0.55 L/min of filtrate with an average of 18.42% permeability recovery, while the oxygen backwashing produced 0.47 L/min and 6.26%, respectively. And without any backwashing, the integrated process could produce 0.29 L/min. This shows that the ozone backwash process is capable of periodically recovering from membrane fouling. The resistance of the fouled membrane was approximately 34.4% for the process with ozone backwashing, whereas the resistance was restored by 10.8% for the process with oxygen backwashing. Despite the periodical ozone backwashing and chemical cleaning, irreversible fouling gradually increased approximately 3 to 4%. Approximately 97.6% and 15% turbidity and TOC were removed by ceramic membrane filtration, respectively. Therefore, the integrated process with ozonation and ceramic membrane filtration is a potential greywater treatment process.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.633-640
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• 2008

In this research, the $3.6m^3/day$ scale pilot plant consisting preozonation, coagulation, flocculation, and ceramic membrane processes was operated for long term period to evaluate the validity of ceramic membrane filtration process for treating lake water containing high concentration manganese. The higher concentration of dissolved manganese($Mn^{2+}$) was effectively oxidized to the bigger insoluble colloidal manganese ($MnO^2$) by 1~2 mg/L ozone. The colloidal manganese reacted with coagulant (poly aluminium chloride, PAC) and then formed the big floc. Ceramic membrane rejected effectively manganese floc during membrane filtration. Dissolved organic carbon(DOC) removal was dependent upon $Mn^{2+}$ concentration. While average $Mn^{2+}$ concentration was 0.43 and 0.85 mg/L in raw water, DOC removal rate in preozonation was 26.5 and 13.5%, respectively. The decrease rate of membrane permeability was faster without preozonation than with preozonation while membrane fouling decreased with NOM oxidation by ozone. In conclusion, raw water containing high concentration of manganese can be effectively treated in preozonation-coagulation-ceramic membrane filtration system.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.501-510
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• 2017

In this study, it is estimated that ceramic membrane process which can operate stably in harsh conditions replacing existing organic membrane connected with coagulation, sedimentation etc.. Jar-test was conducted by using artificial raw water containing kaolin and humic acid. It was observed that coagulant (A-PAC, 10.6%) 4mg/l is the optimal dose. As a results of evaluation of membrane single filtration process (A), coagulation-membrane filtration process (B) and coagulation-sedimentation-membrane filtration process (C), TMP variation is stable regardless of in Flux $2m^3/m^2{\cdot}day$. But in Flux $5m^3/m^2{\cdot}day$, it show change of 1-89.3 kpa by process. TMP of process (B) and (C) is increased 11.8, 0.6 kpa each. But, the (A) showed the greatest change of TMP. When evaluate (A) and (C) in Flux $10m^3/m^2{\cdot}day$, TMP of (A) stopped operation being exceeded 120 kpa in 20 minutes. On the other hand, TMP of (C) is increased only 3 kpa in 120 minutes. Through this, membrane filtration process can be operated stably by using the linkage between the pretreatment process and the ceramic membrane filtration process. Turbidity of treated water remained under 0.1 NTU regardless of flux condition and DOC and $UV_{254}$ showed a removal rate of 65-85%, 95% more each at process connected with pretreatment. Physical cleaning was carried out using water and air of 500kpa to show the recovery of pollutants formed on membrane surface by filtration. In (A) process, TMP has increased rapidly and decreased the recovery by physical cleaning as the flux rises. This means that contamination on membrane surface is irreversible fouling difficult to recover by using physical cleaning. Process (B) and (C) are observed high recovery rate of 60% more in high flux and especially recovery rate of process (B) is the highest at 95.8%. This can be judged that the coagulation flocs in the raw water formed cake layer with irreversible fouling and are favorable to physical cleaning. As a result of estimation, observe that ceramic membrane filtration connected with pretreatment improves efficiency of filtration and recovery rate of physical cleaning. And ceramic membrane which is possible to operate in the higher flux than organic membrane can be reduce the area of water purification facilities and secure a stable quantity of water by connecting the ceramic membrane with pretreatment process.

• Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.377-383
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• 2017

A tube-type ceramic membrane for microfiltration was developed, and the membrane module comprised of three membranes was also applied to biological carbon and nitrogen removal processes for post-treatment. Manufacturing the microfiltration membrane was successful with the structure and boundary of the coated and support layers within the membrane module clearly observable. Total kjeldahl nitrogen removal from effluent was additionally achieved through the elimination of solids containing organic nitrogen by use of the ceramic membrane module. Removal of suspended solids and colloidal substances were noticeably improved after membrane filtration, and the filtration function of the ceramic membrane could also easily be recovered by physical cleaning. By using the ceramic membrane module, the system showed average removals of organics, nitrogen, and solids up to 98%, 80% and 99.9%, respectively. Thus, this microfiltration system appears to be an alternative and flexible option for existing biological nutrient removal processes suffering from poor settling performance due to the use of a clarifier.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.11-18
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• 2023

This work addresses the development of microfiltration ceramic membrane from alumina using extrusion method. The membranes were sintered at different temperatures ranging between 1000 and 1300℃. The alumina was characterized with thermogravimetric analysis, particle size distribution, X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectrometer and scanning electron microscope analysis. Subsequently, the effect of sintering temperature on the membrane properties such as porosity, flexural strength, and pure water permeability was investigated and optimized for the sintering temperature. It is observed that with increasing sintering temperature, the porosity of the membranes decreases and the flexural strength, and pure water permeability of the membranes increase. The uncoated and coated membranes were compared at constant flux mode of filtration. Under the turbidity solution recirculation alone at 100 NTU, trans-membrane pressure (TMP) of uncoated membrane remained constant when the filtration flux was below 121 Lm^-2 h ^-1 , while the coated membrane was 111 Lm_-2 h ^-1 . Although suction pressure increased more rapidly at higher turbidity, coated membrane filtration showed better removal efficiency of the turbidity.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.35 no.6
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• pp.425-436
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• 2021

In this study, chemically enhanced steam cleaning(CESC) was applied as a novel and efficient method for the control of organic and inorganic fouling in ceramic membrane filtration. The constant filtration regression model and the resistance in series model(RISM) were used to investigate the membrane fouling mechanisms. For total filtration, the coefficient of determination(R²) with an approximate value of 1 was obtained in the intermediate blocking model which is considered as the dominant contamination mechanism. In addition, most of the coefficient values showed similar values and this means that the complex fouling was formed during the filtration period. In the RISM, R _c/R _f increased about 4.37 times in chemically enhanced steam cleaning compared to physical backwashing, which implies that the internal fouling resistance was converted to cake layer resistance, so that the membrane fouling hardly to be removed by physical backwashing could be efficiently removed by chemically enhanced steam cleaning. The results of flux recovery rate showed that high-temperature steam may loosen the structure of the membrane cake layer due to the increase in diffusivity and solubility of chemicals and finally enhance the cleaning effect. As a consequence, it is expected that chemically enhanced steam cleaning can drastically improve the efficiency of membrane filtration process when the characteristics of the foulant are identified.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.35 no.12
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• pp.877-882
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• 2013

The application of ultrafiltration (UF) and microfiltration (MF) membranes has been increased for drinking water purification. The advantages of UF/MF membrane process compared to conventional treatment processes are stable operation under varying feed water quality, smaller construction area, and automatic operation. Most membrane treatment plants are designed with polymeric membranes. Recently, some studies suggested that the process of treating surface water with ceramic membranes is competitive to the application of polymeric membranes. Higher water flux, less frequent cleaning, and much longer lifetime are the advantages of ceramic membrane comparing to polymeric membrane. Therefore, this research focused on the application of ceramic MF membrane pilot plant at the slow sand filtration plant. The ceramic membrane pilot plant has three trains that used raw water and sand filtered water as a feed water, respectively. For optimizing the pilot plant process, the coagulation with PACl coagulant was used as a pretreatment of ceramic membrane process. In addition, CEB (Chemical Enhanced Backwash) process using $H_2SO_4$ and NaOCl was used for 1.5 days, respectively. The experimental results showed that applying the optimum coagulant dose before membrane filtration showed enhancing membrane fluxes for both raw water and sand filtered water. Also, when using raw water as a feed of membrane, minimum fouling rate was 2.173 kPa/cycle with 25 mg/L of PACl and when using sand filtered water, the minimum fouling rate was 0.301 kPa/cycle with 5 mg/L of PACl.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.77-87
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• 2018

In this study, the effects of operating conditions on the formation of reversible and irreversible fouling were investigated in the filtration using ceramic membrane for water treatment process. The effect of coagulation pretreatment on fouling formation was also evaluated by comparing the performance of membrane filtration both with and without addition of coagulant. A resistance-in-series-model was applied for the analysis of membrane fouling. Total resistance (RT) and internal fouling resistance (Rf) increased in the membrane filtration process without coagulation as membrane flux and feed water concentrations increased. Internal fouling resistance, which was not recovered by physical cleaning, was more than 70% of the total resistance at the range of the membrane flux more than $5m^3/m^2{\cdot}day$. In the combined process with coagulation, the cake layer resistance (Rc) increased to about 30-80% of total resistance. As the cake layer formed by coagulation floc was easily removed by physical cleaning, the recovery rate by physical cleaning was 54~90%. It was confirmed from the results that the combined process was more efficient to recover the filtration performance by physical cleaning due to higher formation ratio of reversible fouling, resulted in the mitigation of the frequency of chemical cleaning.

• Korean Membrane Journal
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.50-57
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• 2006

We treated lake water by ceramic ultrafiltration membranes and found the optimal backflushing period and trans-membrane pressure (TMP) of periodic water-backflushing system. The optimal filtration time interval at fixed BT = 3 sec was 30 for A002 membrane in all viewpoints of $J/J_0,\;R_f$, and $V_T$, and we could acquire the highest $V_T$ value in the membranes used here. However, the highest $V_T$ was acquired at FT = 60 sec for M9, and at FT = 90 sec for C005 membrane. Then the lower TMP reduced the membrane fouling during filtration of lake water, and could maintain the higher permeate flux compared with the initial flux. However, the largest value $V_T$ could be obtained at the highest TMP condition for M9 membrane at fixed FT = 60 sec and BT = 3 sec. The quality of treated water in our UF ceramic system was Turbidity = $0.20{\sim}4.88NTU$, $COD_{Mn} = 0.00{\sim}2.58 mg/L$, $TDS = l8{\sim}71 mg/L$, and $NH_3-N = 0.004{\sim}1.689 mg/L$.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.31-39
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• 2020

Anaerobic membrane bioreactor (AnMBR) treatment has been widely studied in recent years because of the potential for production of bio-energy from wastewater and energy-positive operation of wastewater treatment plants. Several AnMBR systems, including those that incorporate ceramic membranes, take advantage of enhanced water permeability and low membrane fouling potentials. Given that differences in the ceramic membranes may influence the results of AnMBR studies, relevant details are discussed in this review, which focuses on the profiles of common ceramic membranes used in AnMBR, treatment and filtration performances of different anaerobic ceramic membrane bioreactors (AnCMBRs), and the membrane fouling mitigation methods available for effective AnCMBRs operation. The aim of this review is to provide a comprehensive summary of AnCMBR performance, feed wastewater characteristics, operating conditions, and the methods available for effective fouling mitigation.