• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.27 no.12
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• pp.1311-1320
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• 2005

The purpose of this research is to survey characteristics of microbial community and the removal efficiency of organic materials for biological activated carbon in water treatment plant. Coal based activated carbon retained more attached bacterial biomass on the surface of the activated carbon than the other activated carbon with operating time and materials. The heterotrophic plate count(HPC), eubacteria(EUB) and 4,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole(DAPI) counts were ranged from $0.95{\times}10^7$ to $52.4{\times}10^7$ CFU/g, from $3.8{\times}10^8$ to $134.2{\times}10^8$ cells/g and from $7.0{\times}10^8$ to $250.2{\times}10^8$ cells/g, respectively. The biomass of EUB and DAPI appeared to be much more $10^2$ than HPC, which were increasing in bed volume of 20,000 at the stage of steady-state. The change of microbial community by analyzing fluorescent in situ hybridization(FISH) method with rRNA-targeted oligonucleotide probes, the dominant group was $\alpha$-proteobacteria($\alpha$ group) and high G+C content bacteria(HGC) the lowest distributing rate before reaching the bed volume of 20,000. After reaching the bed volume of 20,000, $\alpha$ group and other groups of bacteria became decreased, on the other hand, the proportion of both $\beta$-proteobacteria($\beta$ group) and $\gamma$-proteobacteri($\gamma$ group) were increasing. Coconut and wood based activated carbons had similar trend with coal based activated carbon, but the rate of $\alpha$ group on coal based activated carbon had gradually increased. Bacterial production with the operating period appeared highest in coal based activated carbon at the range of $1.2{\sim}3.4\;mg-C/m^3{\cdot}h$ while the coconut and wood based activated carbon were ranged from 1.1 to 2.6 $mg-C/m^3{\cdot}h$ and from 0.7 to 3.5 $mg-C/m^3{\cdot}h$ respectively. The removal efficiency of assimilable organic carbon(AOC) showed to be highly correlated with bacterial production. The correlation coefficient between removal efficiency of AOC and bacterial production were 0.679 at wood based activated carbon, 0.291 at coconut based activated carbon and 0.762 at coal based activated carbon, respectively.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.50 no.1
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• pp.149-154
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• 2012

The adsorption and desorption behavior of biofilter-medium was investigated on the performance of an adsorption column. Continuous flow-isothermal adsorption experiments were performed to treat waste air containing such a VOC as ethanol under the same condition of > 90% relative humidity as the condition of the feed to a biofilter process. In case of feeding waste air containing ethanol of 1,000 ppmv (or 2,050 mg ethanol/$m^3$) to the adsorption system at the rate of 2 L/min, the onsets of its breakthrough and reaching the state of dynamic equilibrium at the exit had been delayed 10 and 3 times, respectively, later than those at the 1st stage sampling port. Moreover, in case of 2,000 ppmv (or 4,100 mg ethanol/$m^3$), they had been delayed 9 and 3 times, respectively. Thus, regardless of feeding concentration, the ratios of delaying period were observed to be quite consistent each other at the exit of the adsorption column. With regard to the period of desorption, the ratios of delaying period were consistent each other to be 1.5 for both cases. In addition, the effect of microbial activity and sterilization-process was studied on adsorption equilibrium. The ethanol concentration in the vapor phase of vials packed with sterilized granular activated carbon (GAC) was quite consistent to that with unsterilized GAC. However, the ethanol concentrations in the vapor phase of vials packed with unsterilized compost and the unsterilized mixture of GAC and compost were higher than those with sterilized compost and the sterilized mixture of GAC and compost, respectively.

• Asian Journal of Turfgrass Science
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.219-228
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• 2009

The construction procedures and artificial turf maintenance program on golf course definitely influence on the distortion of its environment. Soil microbial communities in soil profile were affected directly by those practises on turf areas. In Jeju island, the environmental impact assessment has been required to apply the first quality class granular activated carbon(GAC), which has a high absorbent character to agricultural chemicals, on the soil profiles of golf green system to reduce the pesticide leaching to ground water. This research was carried out to analyze the changes of microbial communities and chemical properties on soil profiles where GAC had been applied at the construction stage at two golf courses in Jeju. The changes of soil microbial population and chemical properties associated with construction methods of soil profile and agrochemical management program were analyzed by monthly at the surface and sub-soil profiles during April through October, 2007. The total numbers of bacteria and fungi, soil moisture content, soil physio-chemical properties were measured on greens and fairways of the both golf courses with different GAC treatment on the green and fairway soil profiles. The results showed that GAC had positive effects on the water holding capacity, pH and EC, however, it did not improved the holding capacity of available nutrients ${NO_3}^-,{NH_4}^+$, and phosphorus by its sorption phenomenon. In microbial count test, the total numbers of bacteria and fungi showed a great variation during sampling dates. That may directly relate to the agrochemical application, however, the ratio of total bacterial number versus total fungus number showed a constant value on a sub-soil of 15~30cm depth. Thus, the construction method of GAC in soil profile, and application of fertilizer and pesticide, both impacted on the changes of microbial population. It's means that the construction method of soil profile and turf management using agro-materials might greatly affect on the turfgrass culture and the environment of golf course.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.167-177
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• 2011

Billions of barrels of briny produced water are generated in the United States every year during oil and gas production. The first step toward recovering or reusing this water is to remove the hazardous organics dissolved in the briny produced water. Biological degradation of hazardous volatile compound could be possible regardless of salinity if they were extracted from briny water. In the current work, the effectiveness of a vapor phase biofilter to degrade the gas-phase contaminants (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes, BTEX) extracted from briny produced water was evaluated. The performance of biofilter system responded well to short periods when the BTEX feed to the biofilter was discontinued. To challenge the system further, the biofilter was subjected to periodic spikes in inlet BTEX concentration as would be expected when it is coupled to a Surfactant-Modified Zeolite (SMZ) bed. Results of these experiments indicate that although the BTEX removal efficiency declined under these conditions, it stabilized at 75% overall removal even when the biofilter was provided with BTEX-contaminated air only 8 hours out of every 24 hours. Benzene removal was found to be the most sensitive to time varying loading conditions. A passive, granular activated carbon bed was effective at attenuating and normalizing the peak BTEX loadings during SMZ regeneration over a range of VOC loads. Field testing of a SMZ bed coupled with an activated carbon buffering/biofilter column verified that this system could be used to remove and ultimately biodegrade the dissolved BTEX constituents in briny produced water.

• 한국생물공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.04a
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• pp.287-292
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• 2005

Transient behavior of biofilter/photo-catalytic reactor system was observed to eliminate both hydrogen sulfide and toluene from waste air at its four sampling ports. The biofilter was packed with a equivolume mixture of granular activated carbon(GAC) and compost as packing media on which Thiobacillus sp. IW and Burkholderia cepacia G4 were inoculated and were fixed. The biofilter/photo-catalytic reactor system was run for eight stages of operation under various operating conditions. As a result the removal efficiencies of hydrogen sulfide and toluene began to decrease from 100% after the inlet loads of hydrogen sulfide and toluene surpassed ca. 100 $S-g/m^{3}/h$ and $161g/m^{3}/h$, respectively, and were rapidly decreased to 60% after the inlet loads of hydrogen sulfide and toluene were increased to 200 $S-g/m^{3}/h$ and $644g/m^{3}/h$, respectively.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.697-704
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• 2008

Stormwater runoff from urban road area as non-point source has a tendency of including lots of pollutants at initial rain period. Recently, there are several cases of having installed treatment facilities for reducing pollution discharge from the impervious cover in urban area to prevent watershed environment from getting worse. The filtration type among non-point source treatment systems has been known as one of the most efficient system for treatment of non-point source pollutants. Therefore, various kinds of filter media such as expanded polypropylene(EPP), granular activated carbon, zeolite, perlite, illite, sand, gravel has been developed. This study was conducted to verify performance and hydraulic characteristics of filter media as measures for non-point source. The experiment was carried out to evaluate applicability and variation of 4 kind of most popular filter media(EPP, GAC, Zeolite, Perlite) in headloss with elapsed time and influent flow rate and to obtain data base that could be used to establish management plan for road runoff treatment. In experiment by tap water, it showed that EPP and perlite those are floatable materials showed stable operating performance and lower headloss than the others.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.7-18
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• 2009

In this study, we used the hybrid module that was composed of granular activated carbons (GAC) packing between module inside and outside of tubular ceramic microfiltration membrane for advanced drinking water treatment. Instead of natural organic matters (NOM) and fine inorganic particles in natural water source, modified solution was prepared with humic acid and kaolin. We were investigated effect of water-back-flushing time (BT) and water-back-flushing period (FT) to minimize membrane fouling and to enhance permeate flux (J) in the hybrid process, and tried to find the optimal operating conditions. As a result, resistance of membrane fouling ($R_f$) was slightly decreased according to increasing BT. Also, the shorter FT was the more effective to reduce $R_f$ and to enhance J because of frequent water-back-flushing. However, the optimal BT and FT conditions were 10 sec and 8 min respectively when operating costs were considered. Then, the optimal conditions derived from our experiments of modified solution were applied to lake water treatment. As a result, average treatment efficiencies of turbidity, $UV_{254}$ absorbance, and $COD_{Mn}$ were very high as 99.11%, 91.40% and 89.34%, respectively, but that of TDS was low as 30.05%.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.46 no.5
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• pp.994-1001
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• 2008

Freundlich isothermal adsorption parameters, applicable to such biofilter-model as process-lumping model(Lim's model), for sterilized granular activated carbon(GAC), sterilized compost and sterilized equal volume mixture of GAC and compost were obtained and were compared each other, assuming that adsorbents are enclosed by water layer, in order to construct robust process-lumping biofilter model effective for wide-range of hydrophilic volatile organic compounds(VOC). In this investigation 0.04, 0.08, 0.12, 0.16, 0.2, 0.4, 0.8 and 1.0ml of ethanol were added to three kinds of adsorbent-media and were placed at $30^{\circ}{\cdots}$ under the wet condition of the media, which was the same as biofilter operating condition, until the adsorption reached the condition of equilibrium before each adsorbed amount of ethanol was obtained. Then adsorption capacity parameters(K) and adsorption exponents of Freundlich adsorption isotherm equation, which simulates the adsorbed amount of ethanol equilibrated with the ethanol concentration of the condensed water in the pore of the media, were constructed for sterilized granular activated carbon(GAC), sterilized compost and sterilized equal volume mixture of GAC and compost as (0.7566 and $5.070{\times}10^{-7}mg-ethanol/mgmedia/(mg-ethanol/m^3)^{0.7566}$), (0.8827 and $1.000{\times}10^{-8}mg-ethanol/mgmedia/(mg-ethanol/m^3)^{0.8827}$) and (0.5688 and $5.243{\times}10^{-6}mg-ethanol/mgmedia/(mg-ethanol/m^3)^{0.5688}$), respectively. These Freundlich isothermal adsorption parameters were applicable to the adsorption characteristics of biofilter media enclosed with bio-layer. The order of magnitude of the ratio of ethanol-air/water partition coefficient and toluene-air/water partition coefficient was almost consistent to that of ethanol-adsorbed amounts in this experiment with compost and in the investigation of Delhomenie et al. on toluene-adsorption to wet compost.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.843-849
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• 2007

Monitoring of NOM characteristics is important for improving removal efficiency of natural organic matter (NOM) in water treatment processes. In this study, several NOM characteristics, which include specific UV absorbance (SUVA), total carbonate content, molecular weight distribution, and fluorescence properties, were measured using samples collected from a pilot-scale water treatment plant consisting of coagulation/flocculation (C/F), filtration, ozonation and granular activated carbon (GAC) processes. The highest removal of NOM was observed in C/F and filtration processes as demonstrated by the reduction of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) by 25% and 21%, respectively. Despite nearly no change in DOC, however, the lowest SUVA value and the highest total carbohydrate content were observed in the sample from ozonation process. This indicates that non-degradable aromatic compounds become depleted and biodegradable organic compounds are enriched during the process. Comparison of synchronous fluorescence spectra of the samples showed that ozoation process increased protein-like fluorescence while it decreased fulvic-like and terrestrial humic-like fluorescence. Consistently, a slight peak of protein-like fluorescence was observed in the sample from ozonation process. The greatest change in molecular weight distributions of the samples was observed in C/F process. Comparison of size exclusion chromatogram of the samples revealed that NOM fractions with the molecular weight greater than 2000 Da were reduced by over 90% after C/F process. SUVA values and total carbohydrate content of the samples were well correlated with a ratio of protein-like fluorescence and terrestrial humic-like fluorescence intensities with the correlation coefficients of 0.99 and 0.91, respectively. This suggests that synchronous fluorescence properties of NOM could be used as useful tolls for monitoring changes of some NOM characteristics during water treatment processes.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.13-21
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• 2006

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are widespread soil contaminants and major environmental concerns. PAHs have extremely low water solubility and are strongly sorbed to soil. A potential technology for remediation of PAHcontaminated soils is a soil washing with surfactant solutions. While the use of surfactants significantly enhances the performance of soil remediation, operation costs are increased. Selective adsorption of PAHs by activated carbons is proposed to reuse the surfactants in the soil-washing process. The adsorption isotherms of pure chemicals (Triton X-100 and phenanthrene) onto three granular activated carbons were obtained. The selective adsorption of phenanthrene in mixed solution was examined at various concentrations of phenanthrene and Triton X-100. The selectivity results were discussed with pore size distribution of activated carbons and molecular sizes of phenanthrene and the Triton X-100 monomer. The selectivity for phenanthrene was much larger than 1 regardless of the particle size of activated carbons. The selective adsorption using activated carbons with proper pore size distribution would greatly reduce the material cost for the soil washing process by the reuse of the surfactants.