• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.343-350
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• 2008

Many reports have warned of insufficient water supply in most countries in future and prospected providing safe and clean water become more difficult by lack of access to sustainable drinking water resources. Several facts and figures explained the impact by natural climate change and human activity results in the water scarcity and deterioration. Among many scientific solutions, the seawater desalination using a reverse osmosis membrane, so called SWRO (Seawater Reverse Osmosis) process, has been recognized as one of the most promising alternatives because of its stability and efficiency in producing large amount of drinking water from seawater through desalination by membrane filtration. Recently, in Korea, numerous researches are conducted to develop more productive and cost effective SWRO process for its wide implementation. The objective of this paper is to review the patents concerning SWRO technologies involving the plant engineering, maintenance including pretreatment of seawater and fouling control, module design, and mechanical units development for energy saving. The patents in Korea, U.S., Japan, Europe, and PCT were intensively researched and analyzed to provide the state of the art as well as leading edge technology on SWRO. This information can hopefully suggest meaningful guidelines on future research and development.

• Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.91-94
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• 2013

Recently Ibadan in southwestern Nigeria has been facing severe water shortage due to the increase of population, social and economic activities. In order to meet the shortfall, attempts to utilize rainwater harvesting (RWH) have been made to provide an alternative source of water supply. A desk study was conducted to review various RWH technologies locally, regionally and globally. A hydrological analysis was also carried out using rainfall data for 30 years from two meteorological stations, with the aim of providing a more sustainable RWH system for water supply to private individuals, organizations, and government agencies. RWH is found to be technically feasible based on the prevailing rainfall pattern with over 90% of households having a rooftop constructed from technically appropriate materials. Results of the study indicate that an average roof of $80m^2$ will collect 82,835 L/yr (45 L/person/day) for a family of five people which is about the required water demand for drinking and cooking purposes. Hence, the capacity of storage tanks and the catchment area required for an all-purpose water supply system based on RWH are quite large. These can be reduced to affordable sizes, by collecting and storing water for cooking and drinking only while non-potable uses are supplemented by water from other sources. However, it must be highlighted that due to the type of roofing material, rainwater should go through proper treatment in order to be used for potable purposes. This study clearly shows that Ibadan city has a good rainwater harvesting potential.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.397-409
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• 2014

Algal problem in drinking water treatment is being gradually increased by causing deterioration of water supplies therefore, especially taste and odor compounds such as geosmin and 2-MIB occur mainly aesthetic problem by its unpleasant effects resulting in the subsequent onset of complaints from drinking water consumer. Recently, geosmin and 2-MIB are detected frequently at abnormally high concentration level. However, conventional water treatment without advanced water treatment processes such as adsorption and oxidation process, cannot remove these two compounds efficiently. Moreover, it is known that the advanced treatment processes i.e. adsorption and oxidation have also several limits to the removal of geosmin and 2-MIB. Therefore, the purpose of this study was not only to evaluate full scale nanofiltration membrane system with $300m^3/day$ of permeate capacity and 90% of recovery on the removal of geosmin and 2-MIB in spiked natural raw water sources at high feed concentration with a range of approximately 500 to 2,500 ng/L, but also to observe rejection property of the compounds within multi stage NF membrane system. Rejection rate of geosmin and 2-MIB by NF membrane process was 96% that is 4% of passage regardless of the feed water concentration which indicates NF membrane system with an operational values suggested in this research can be employed in drinking water treatment plant to control geosmin and 2-MIB of high concentration. But, according to results of regression analysis in this study it is recommended that feed water concentration of geosmin and 2-MIB would not exceed 220 and 300 ng/L respectively which is not to be perceived in drinking tap water. Also it suggests that the removal rate might be depended on an operating conditions such as feed water characteristics and membrane flux. When each stage of NF membrane system was evaluated relatively higher removal rate was observed at the conditions that is lower flux, higher DOC and TDS, i.e., $2^{nd}$ stage NF membrane systems, possibly due to an interaction mechanisms between compounds and cake layer on the membrane surfaces.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.23-29
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• 2008

Throughout the analysis of field data from water distribution system, valid parameters were determined that can be included in the water service and design plan. This study investigates water consumption patterns to understand the variation of water-demand structures utilizing the pattern analysis of domestic purpose water. Water use data were collected by a public water resources management firm in Korea, Kwater, for 140 houses monitored during three years. Flow meters were installed at the faucet for drinking water, the shower booth, the laundry machine, bathroom sink, toilet, and garden faucet. Data was filtered using multiple physically meaningful criteria to improve analysis credibility. Mann Kendall and Spearman's Rho tests were used to carry out the analysis. Distinct factors of water consumption patterns can be determined for both increasing and decreasing trends of water use. Throughout the data analysis, the characterization of terms was classified and analyzed by the condition of the location of water-demand. Analysis of this data provide a physical basis for the parameter configuration of a reasonable design for a domestic water demand prediction model.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.35 no.5
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• pp.312-320
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• 2013

Particulates in drinking water distribution system (DWDS) are mostly influenced by internal corrosion of metal pipes and sediment in pipelines due to the solution of this effect is limited. The particle size, component and properties of compounds for particulates in distributed water are different and the difference of these characteristics will be occurred by the kind of facilities, pipe condition, external factors and supply system etc. In this study, conducting the investigation of water quality in DWDS researches with particulates in the water. Monitoring sites were each water supply reservoir and the end of water supply area in DWDS. To collect particulate material at each sampling site, $47{\phi}$ glass microfiber filter type GF/C was performed using a filtration. Substances that the effect of the turbidity in the water according to particulate suspended solids and inorganic materials is due to the increasing particulates in the end of DWDS were increased. The result of compounds analysis by using X-ray diffraction (XRD) were Goethite (${\alpha}$-FeOOH), Magnetite ($Fe_3O_4$) in the end of DWDS and Quartz ($SiO_2$), Yeelimite ($Ca_4Al_6O_{12}SO_4$) at the effluent of waterworks and reservoirs. There were differences the compounds and sediments in the releasing or remaining water distribution facilities.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.45 no.5
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• pp.434-442
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• 2019

Objectives: This study was performed in order to report the epidemiological features of a food poisoning outbreak caused by multiple pathogens in a high school in Chungcheongnam-do Province, Korea in April 2019 and to suggest measures to prevent a similar incidence. Methods: A total of 39 patients with diarrhea were examined. Environmental samples were obtained from 6 food handlers, 4 food utensils, 72 preserved foods served during the food poisoning outbreak, 9 door handles, 10 drinking water samples from water dispensers, and 6 ground water samples from water taps. These analyzed to detect viruses and bacteria. Results: Among the 39 patients, 21 cases (53.8%) of enteroaggregative E. coli (EAEC), 7 cases of Staphylococcus aureus (17.9%), and 17 cases of norovirus (43.6%) were positive, and in 16 of the cases a co-infection with at least one other pathogen were observed. EAEC was assumed to be transmitted from contaminated drinking water because it was also detected in the water sample from a water dispenser in the dormitory. Staphylococcus aureus was isolated only in the fecal samples of patients, meaning it was not possible to trace its origin. The genotype of norovirus detected in the drinking water and ground water was consistent with that isolated from patients, and it was determined that the norovirus infection originated from the school's water environment. Conclusions: These findings indicate that a lack of environmental hygiene management related to school meals caused the food poisoning incident. In particular, a lack of management of drinking water, water supply, and personal hygiene should be pointed out. This should be urgently addressed and continuous monitoring should be carried out in the future. In addition, students and staff should be educated and trained to improve their personal hygiene.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.767-777
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• 2012

Annular Biofilm Reactor (ABR) equipped with coupons of three different pipe materials (STS 304, PVC, PE) was used to generate drinking water biofilm samples. The level of assimilable organic carbon (AOC) during the sample generation period was $37.3{\mu}g/L$, and this level did not seem to be low enough to limit the formation of biofilm in this study. Terminal-restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) analyses determined T-RF profile as early as 3 h of exposure on PVC coupons. Average surface roughness ($R_a$) measured by atomic force microscopic analyses was 125.7 nm for PVC, and this value was higher than for STS (71.6 nm) and PE (74.0 nm). However, biofilm formation was faster on STS (6 h) than on PE (12 h), which indicated that surface roughness might not be the only factor that controlled the initiation of biofilm development. Upon detection of the T-RF peaks, richness (S) and diversity indices such as Shannon (H) and Simpson (1/D) demonstrated a rather slow increase until 48 h followed by rapid increase regardless of the pipe materials. Differences of microbial community structures among the biofilm samples were determined based on the cluster analysis using Jaccard coefficients (Sj). Biofilm communities could be divided into two distinct groups according to the exposure time regardless of the pipe materials. First group contained a young (< 48 h) biofilm samples (10 out of 11) but second group contained a mature (${\geq}$ 48 h) samples (11 out of 14). Results suggested that, due to the complexity of biofilm, the targeting of the first group of cluster was crucial for optimizing the management of drinking water distribution systems and controlling microbial growth.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.366-376
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• 2004

Use of artificial circulation system has become popular in Korean reservoirs to control algal blooms and subsequent color, taste and odor problems in drinking water. It was found that the most of aeration system in Korean reservoirs are under-designed compared to existing installations in US and Australia. This was especially true for larger reservoirs greater than $5{\times}10^7m^3$ in volume since it is common to install the system in the vicinity of intake areas only. Consequently, successful cases of artificial circulation systems operations are limited to few small reservoirs less than $1{\times}10^7m^3$. It is suggested that the design methods need to be developed considering physical characteristics and water quality kinetics inside of reservoirs. Also operation methods of artificial circulation systems need to be established considering the water quality dynamics, stratification and morphological characteristics of reservoirs. Finally, it is suggested to maintain comprehensive and long term monitoring programs to validate the application of artificial circulation system in reservoirs.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.35-43
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• 2020

Turbidity has various effects on the water quality and ecosystem of a river. High turbidity during floods increases the operation cost of a drinking water supply system. Thus, the management of turbidity is essential for providing safe water to the public. There have been various efforts to estimate turbidity in river systems for proper management and early warning of high turbidity in the water supply process. Advanced data analysis technology using machine learning has been increasingly used in water quality management processes. Artificial neural networks(ANNs) is one of the first algorithms applied, where the overfitting of a model to observed data and vanishing gradient in the backpropagation process limit the wide application of ANNs in practice. In recent years, deep learning, which overcomes the limitations of ANNs, has been applied in water quality management. LSTM(Long-Short Term Memory) is one of novel deep learning algorithms that is widely used in the analysis of time series data. In this study, LSTM is used for the prediction of high turbidity(>30 NTU) in a river from the relationship of turbidity to discharge, which enables early warning of high turbidity in a drinking water supply system. The model showed 0.98, 0.99, 0.98 and 0.99 for precision, recall, F1-score and accuracy respectively, for the prediction of high turbidity in a river with 2 hour frequency data. The sensitivity of the model to the observation intervals of data is also compared with time periods of 2 hour, 8 hour, 1 day and 2 days. The model shows higher precision with shorter observation intervals, which underscores the importance of collecting high frequency data for better management of water resources in the future.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.153-161
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• 2023

The reservoir tank in an apartment is crucial for maintaining the quality of drinking water after it has undergone treatment. Investigating the water quality and potential contaminants in the reservoir tank is essential to ensure the safety of the drinking water. This study examined the water quality and precipitated suspended solids that accumulate at the bottom of the reservoir tanks in four apartments located in Gyeonggi province. As a result of the water quality investigation, turbidity increased proportionally to the distance from the water treatment plant (WTP) to the household. Heavy metals were also detected in the reservoir tank inlet but not in the water supplied from the WTP. The precipitated suspended solids (SS) in the reservoir tank contain high levels of heavy metals and total organic carbon (TOC). The precipitated SS mainly consists of Al, Mn, and Fe, which are expected to be a combination with turbidity-inducing substances. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis revealed the presence of γ-FeO(OH), MnO₂, and β-Fe₂O₃ in the SS. Additionally, F-EEM analysis indicates that the dissolved organic matter in the SS is mainly derived from a natural water source and microorganism activities, including metal-oxidizing bacteria and biofilms that can absorb metal ions. Based on these findings, several countermeasures can be taken to prevent the inflow of SS into the household, including regularly cleaning the reservoir tank, replacing or cleaning old pipes in the water supply system, and implementing monitoring and filtering systems to manage the SS.