• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.13 no.10
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• pp.911-919
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• 2004

The purpose of this research was evaluated economical effect to apply alternative external carbon source. Conventional activated sludge process in municipal wastewater treatment plant was adapted and introduced to Biological nutrient removal processes to meet the newly enforced effluent quality standard for nutrient removal in Korea. Low $COD/NH_4^+-N$ ratio and higher nutrient concentration of influent characteristics force to inject external carbon source for denitrifying recycled nitrate. In the most case, methanol was used as external carbon source. But Methanol is expensive and very dangerous in handling. So we could find cheaper and safer external carbon source substituted methanol in last study. This alternative external carbon source is named RCS(recoverd carbon source) and a by-product of fine chemical product at chemical plant. When RCS was applied real municipal wastewater treatment plant, average $55\~65\%$ of T-N removal efficiency, 8.8mg/l of effluent T-N concentration, 11.3mg/l of effleunt COD concentration were obtained without effluent COD increase as against used methanol. To apply RCS in municipal wastewater treatment plant obtain approximately $\74.5%$ expenditure cost reduction in comparison with methanol dosage cost.

• Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.284-290
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• 2016

Life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology can be used to assess impacts on the environment that might be generated during treatment of wastewater and sludge treatment. In this work, LCA methodology was suggested to evaluate monthly environmental impact of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). Two field scale WWTPs, A2/O process and conventional activated sludge process (CAS), were selected as target plants and the operational data were collected from those plants. As the function units, the unit volume of treated wastewater of $1m^3$ and 1 kg T-N eq. removed were selected. The environmental effect of target WWTPs operation were assessed as impact categories such as global warming potential, eutrophication potential, and so on. From monthly profiles of each index, it was shown that the environmental impact of WWTPs has seasonal patterns influenced by the influent flow rate variation causing higher impacts in winter than summer. This is due to the fact that there were no significant increase in the electricity consumption and chemical usage during the summer while the treated volume of wastewater was increased.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.145-152
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• 1993

An experimental research was conducted in order to study the treatability of leachate and a combined wastewater of municipal landfill leachate and municipal sewage. The landfill leachate was that of Nanjido landfill site, and the municipal sewage was obtained from Chungnang municipal sewage treatment plant of Seoul. Several sets of bench-scale sequencing batch reactor(SBR) were used as experimental apparatus. Specially investigated items in this experiment were the removal efficiency of substrate and the influence of the hydraulic retention time(HRT). The experiment lasted for about 8 months. The result are as follows ; 1) The characteristics of leachate were pH 7.4~8.1, BOD 280~450 mg/l, COD 1300 ~ 1350 mg/l, T-N 2021 ~2110 mg/1,7-P 2.7 ~3.2 mg/l, Cl-3540 ~4085 mg/l, and heavy metals are a very small amount. And the characteristics of sewage Ivere pH 6.9~7.3, BOD 78.4~129.3 mg/1, COD 121.2~305.0 mg/l, T-N 14.9~36.4 mg/l, T-P 1.3 ~5.9 mg/l. 2) The treatability of leachate alone was not treat well. So for the good treatment of leachate, it was necessary to deal with the pretreatment before biological treatment and a combined treatment of municipal serfage. 3) The various contents of the leachate were 5%, 10%, and 50% and the removal efficiency of COD was 86.0%, 82.8%, 60.6%, and 31.7%. The maximum content of the leachate which could be sucessfully treated by SBR in the combined treatment was 10% of that of sewage.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.267-276
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• 2010

Many plants have been improved to adapt the target of the biological treatment processes changed from organics to nutrients since the water quality criteria of effluent was reinforced and included T-N and T-P for the municipal wastewater treatment plant. To meet the criteria of T-N and T-P, the conventional biological reactor such as aeration tank in activated sludge system is changed to the BNR (biological nutrient removal) processes, which are typically divided into three units as anaerobic, anoxic and oxic tank. Therefore, the solid separation process should be redesigned to fit the BNR processes in case of the application of the DAF (dissolved air flotation) process as an alternatives because the solid-liquid separation characteristics of microbial flocs produced in the BNR processes are also different from that of activated sludge system as well. The results of this study revealed that the microbial floc of the anaerobic tank was the hardest to be separated among the three steps of the unit tanks for the BNR processes. On the contrary, the oxic tank was best for the removal efficiency of nutrients as well as suspended solid. In addition, the removal efficiency of nutrients was much improved under the chemical coagulation treatment though coagulation was not indispensable with a respect to the solid separation. On the other hand, in spited that the separation time for the microbial floc from the BNR processes were similar to the typical particles like clay flocs, over $2.32{\times}10^3$ ppm of air volume concentration was required to keep back the break-up of the bubble-floc agglomerates.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.1-23
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• 2012

The coupling of anaerobic biological process and membrane separation could provide excellent suspended solids removal and better biomass retention for wastewater treatment. This coupling improves the biological treatment process while allowing for the recovery of energy through biogas. This review gives a basic description of the anaerobic wastewater treatment process, summarizes the state of the art of anaerobic membrane bioreactors (AnMBRs), and describes the current research trends and needs for the development of AnMBRs. The research interest on AnMBR has grown over the conventional anaerobic processes such as upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB). Studies on AnMBRs have developed different reactor configurations to enhance performances. The AnMBR performances have achieved comparable status to other high rate anaerobic reactors. AnMBR is highly suitable for application with thermophilic anaerobic process to enhance performances. Studies indicate that the applications of AnMBR are not only limited to the high strength industrial wastewater treatment, but also for the municipal wastewater treatment. In recent years, there is a significant progress in the membrane fouling studies, which is a major concern in AnMBR application.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.15-21
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• 2003

Two microbial communities of activated sludge in the same municipal wastewater, but treated with different systems, were studied and compared using molecular microbiological approaches. The bacterial 16S rDNA sequences from 124 clones were analyzed, however, the majority of them were not closely related to any known species, and found to belong to 8 different phylogenetic groups and 3 different unidentified groups. The relative frequencies of each group were similar between the two microbial communities. Fingerprinting using terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) showed that the putative Nitrospira-related populations were more diverse and quantitatively higher in the KNR process system than in the other system using a conventional activated sludge process. The relationship between the bacterial community composition and the higher removal efficiency of nitrogen and phosphorus in the KNR process is discussed.

• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.207-214
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• 2013

A concerted effort to develop alternative forms of energy is underway due to fossil fuel shortages and its deleterious effects. Recently, bioenergy from microalgae has gained prominence and the use of municipal wastewater as a low cost alternative for a nutrient source has significant advantages. In this study, we have employed municipal wastewater directly after primary treatment (primary settling basin) in a small scale raceway pond (SSRP) for microalgal growth. Indigenous microalgae in the wastewater were encouraged to grow in the SSRP under optimal conditions. The mean removal efficiencies of TN, TP, and $NH_3-N$ after 6 days were 77.77%, 63.55%, and 89.02%, respectively. The average lipid content of the microalgae was 19.51% of dry cell weight, and linolenate and linoleate (18:n) were the predominant fatty acids. The 18S rRNA gene analysis and microscopic observations of the indigenous microalgae community revealed the presence of Chlorella vulgaris and Scenedesmus obliquus as the dominant microalgae. These results indicate that untreated municipal wastewater, serving as an excellent nitrogen and phosphate source for microalgal growth, could be treated using microalgae in open raceway ponds. Moreover, microalgal biomass could be further profitable by the extraction of biodiesel.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.30 no.12
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• pp.1281-1286
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• 2008

Nitrous oxide(N$_2$O) is well known as a greenhouse gas that contributes to the global warming (310 times more per molecule than carbon dioxide) and to the destruction of the ozone layer. The objective of this study is to estimate N$_2$O emission factor using an emission isolation flux chamber from municipal wastewater treatment plants. N$_2$O gas was analysed by GC/ECD with 6 port gas sampling valve. The results of this study were as follows. N$_2$O emission factor of 5-Stage process from Y wastewater treatment plants was lowest as 0.94 g-N$_2$O/kg-TN. And that of other processes were 2.65 g-N$_2$O/kg-TN for Activated sludge process, 9.30 g-N$_2$O/kg-TN for Denipho process, and 26.73 g-N$_2$O/kg-TN for Sequencing Batch Reactor process. We have known that 5-Stage process is most appropriate process to reduce greenhouse for municipal wastewater treatment plants.

• Journal of Wetlands Research
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.501-507
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• 2017

The heavy metal such as Nikel (Ni) in industrial wastewater is one of the major reasons of decreasing nitrification efficiency in municipal wastewater treatment plants (MWTPs). In this study, laboratory scale reactors were operated in order to analyse of nitrification efficiency and improvement measures. As a result, nitrification efficiency during high Ni concentration (0.295 mg/L) was about 20%. However nitrification efficiency during low Ni concentration (0.114 mg/L) was over 70%. The changes of the micro-organism activity according to Ni concentration was investigated as being the major reason behind the gap of nitrification efficiency through analysing AUR and SNR. Increasing the HRT in high Ni concentration also increased the nitrification efficiency. Thus, maintenance of microorganisms and increasing the HRT in nitrification reactors suggests that measures taken to treat wastewater is positively correlated with high concentration of heavy metal.

• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.41 no.11
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• pp.318-327
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• 2017

Background: A typical sewage treatment plant is designed for organic and nutrient removal from municipal sewage water and not targeted to eliminate micropollutants such as pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and nano-sized metals which become a big concern for sustainable human and ecological system and are mainly discharged from sewage treatment plant. Therefore, despite contaminant removal by wastewater treatment processes, there are still remaining environmental risks by untreated pollutants in STP (sewage treatment plant) effluents. This study performed aquatic toxicity tests of raw wastewater and treated effluents in two sewage treatment plants to evaluate toxicity reduction by wastewater treatment process and analyze concentration of contaminants to reveal potential toxic factors in STP effluents. Methods: Water samples were collected from each treatment steps of two STPs, and acute and chronic toxicity tests were conducted following USEPA (United States Environmental Protection Agency) and OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) guidelines. Endpoints were immobility for mortality and reproduction effect for estrogenicity. Results: Acute $EC_{50}s$ (median effective concentration) of influents for Seungki (SK) and Jungnang (JN) STPs are $54.13{\pm}32.64%$ and $30.38{\pm}24.96%$, respectively, and reduced to $96.49{\pm}7.84%$ and 100%. Acute toxicity reduction was clearly correlated with SS (suspended solids) concentration because of filter feeding characteristics of test organisms. Chronic toxicity tests revealed that lethal effect was reduced and low concentration of influents showed higher number of neonates. However, toxicity reduction was not related to nutrient removal. Fecundity effect positively increased in treated wastewater compared to that in raw wastewater, and no significant differences were observed compared to the control group in JN final effluent implying potential effects of estrogenic compounds in the STP effluents. Conclusions: Conventional wastewater treatment process reduced some organics and nutritional compounds from wastewater, and it results in toxicity reduction in lethal effect and positive reproductive effect but not showing correlation. Unknown estrogenic compounds could be a reason causing the increase of brood size. This study suggests that pharmaceutical residues and nanoparticles in STP effluents are one of the major micropollutants and underline as one of estrogenic effect factors.