• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.304-311
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• 2012

Chlorinated ethylenes such as perchloroethylene (PCE) and trichloroethylene (TCE) are widely used as industrial solvents and degreasing agents. Because of improper handling, these highly toxic chlorinated ethylenes have been often detected from contaminated soils and groundwater. Biological PCE dechlorination activities were tested in bacterial cultures inoculated with 10 different environmental samples from sediments, sludges, soils, and groundwater. Of these, the sediment using culture (SE 2) was selected and used for establishing an efficient PCE dechlorinating enrichment culture since it showed the highest activity of dechlorination. The cathode chamber of bioelectrochemical system (BES) was inoculated with the enrichment culture and the system with a cathode polarized at -500 mV (Vs Ag/AgCl) was operated under fed-batch mode. PCE was dechlorinated to ethylene via TCE, cis-dichloroethylene, and vinyl chloride. Microbial community analysis with polymerase chain reaction-denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (PCR-DGGE) showed that the microbial community in the enrichment culture was significantly changed during the bio-electrochemical PCE dechlorination in the BES. The communities of suspended-growth bacteria and attached-growth bacteria on the cathode surface are also quite different from each other, indicating that there were some differences in their mechanisms receiving electrons from electrode for PCE dechlorination. Further detailed research to investigate electron transfer mechanism would make the bioelctrochemical dechlorination technique greatly useful for bioremediation of soil and groundwater contaminated with chlorinated ethylenes.

• KSBB Journal
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.438-442
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• 2007

A biosensor using electrochemically-active bacteria (EAB) enriched in three-electrode electrochemical cell, was developed for the determination of biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) in wastewater. In the electrochemical cell, the positively poised working electrode with applying a potential of 0.7 V was used as an electron acceptor for the EAB. The experimental results using artificial and raw wastewater showed that the current pattern generated by the biosensor and its Coulombic yield were proportional to the concentration of organic matter in wastewater. The correlation coefficients of BOD vs Coulombic yield and $BOD_5$ vs Coulombic yield were 0.99 and 0.98, respectively. These results indicate that the biosensor enriched with the EAB capable of transferring electrons directly toward the electrode can be utilized as a water-quality monitoring system due to a quick and accurate response.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.61-72
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• 2022

We investigated the electrochemical behavior of Sn (93.0 %)-Ag (4.06 %)-Cu (0.89 %) during electrolysis of Pb-free solder waste to recover tin and silver. A thin strip of the solder waste produced by high-temperature melting and casting was used as a working electrode to perform electrochemical analysis. During anodic polarization, the current peak of an active region decreased with an increase in the concentration of sulfuric acid used as an electrolyte. This resulted in the electro-dissolution of the working electrode in the electrolyte (1.0 molL^-1 sulfuric acid) for a constant current study. The study revealed that the thickening of an anode slime layer at the working surface continuously increased the electrode potential of the working electrode. At 10 mAcm^-2, the dissolution reaction continued for 25 h. By contrast, at 50 mAcm^-2, a sharp increase in the electrode potential stopped the dissolution in 2.5 h. During dissolution, silver enrichment in the anode slime reached 94.3% in the 1 molL^-1 sulfuric acid electrolyte containing a 0.3 molL^-1 chlorine ion, which was 12.7% higher than that without chlorine addition. Moreover, the chlorine enhanced the stability of the dissolved tin ions in the electrolyte as well as the current efficiency of tin electro-deposition at the counter electrode.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.17-26
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• 1998

A study on the recovery of silver and nitric acid in the liquid waste resulted from the mediated electrochemical oxidation(MEO) process was conducted. The removal of silver in the concentrated nitric acid solutions was carried out by the electrodeposition. The removal efficiency more than 98% could be obtained in nitric acid concentrations less than 3 M with the current efficiency of nearly 100%. The experimonts on the evaporation for the recovery of nitric acid were performed as well. At the evaporation factor of 25., the degree of nitric acid recovery in 3.5 M nitric acid solution containing 0.5 to 1.0 mol% NaNO, was 80~90% resulting in 2.8~3.1 M nitric acid. The design factors and operating conditions of the distillation tower were analyzed by using MEH model derived by Maphtali-Sandholm with the throughput of 4 kg/hr for the enrichment of dilute nitric acid solution recovered by evaporation to reuse in the MEO process. The distillation column composed of eleven theoretical stages having the overall tray efficiency of 70% are needed to obtain 1.03 kg/h of 12M nitric acid and 2.97 kg/h of water with feed being introduced to the column at tray 6 from the bottom at the reflux ratio of 0.25, the reboiler with the heat load of 2.7 kW, and the condenser with the cooling load of 0.5 kW.