• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.459-465
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• 2013

A sequencing batch reactor was operated under different pH conditions to see the influence of pH to microbial community in enhanced biological phosphorus removal (EBPR) systems. Long term influences of different steady-state pH conditions on the microbial community composition were evaluated by polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) and fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH). The shift in populations from polyphosphate-accumulating organisms (PAOs) to Alphaproteobacteria was observed when pH was changed from 7.5 to 7.0. Alphaproteobacteria with the typical morphological traits of tetrad-forming organisms (TFOs) eventually became dominant members. The alphaproteobacterial TFOs were the phenotype expected for glycogen-accumulating organisms (GAOs), which accumulate large amount of glycogen into the cell. The results strongly suggested that low operational pH condition encourages the appearance of the GAOs in EBPR process, significantly reducing the EBPR capacity.

• Korean Journal of Microbiology
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.113-118
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• 2002

Laboratory experiments were aimed to evaluate the effect of nitrate as a electron acceptor during the biological phosphorus uptake and to investigate the microbial community. Anaerobic-anoxic sequencing batch reactor (SBR) compared the removal behaviour to anaerobic-oxic SBR, both SBRs maintained lower effluent quality with 1.0 mgp/1. Anaerobic-anoxic SBR was able to remove additional 5.0 to 7.0 mg (P+N)/ι than other biological nutrient removal (BM) system. Therefore, it was proposed that the anaerobic-anoxic SBR was more effective at weak sewage. From the results of the maicrobial community analysis, it can be inferred that denitrifying bacteria and polyphosphate accumulating bacteria coexist in anaerobic-anoxic SBR during stable condition for removing the nitrogen and phosphorus. Particularly, it was suggested that the Zoogloea ramigera in the $\beta$-subclass of proteobacteria and the Alcaligenes defragrans of the Rhodocyclus group in the $\beta$-subclass of proteobacteria played a major role for removing the nitrogen and phosphorus as dPAOs (denitrifying phosphate accumulating organisms).

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.291-297
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• 2019

Phosphorus is a vital resource for sustaining agriculture and nutrition, but a limited non-renewable resource. Thus, the recovery of phosphorus from waste activated sludge(WAS) was attempted by microwave heating and magnesium ammonium phosphorus(MAP) crystallization. Polyphosphate-accumulating organisms(PAOs) in WAS release phosphate from the cell when they are exposed to high temperature environments. Microwave heating caused phosphorus and ammonia to release from WAS. The amount was increased with increasing temperature, showing that 88.5% of polyphosphate present in the cells were released in the form of phosphate at $80^{\circ}C$. A similar result was also observed in the release of ammonia. On the other hand, both phosphorus and ammonia were crystallized with magnesium, and then was harvested as MAP. Phosphorus recovery rate reached almost 97.8%, but the ammonia was about 13.4%. These results cleary indicate that phosphorus could be recovered from WAS using a physiological trait of PAOs. Heavy metal analyses also show that the MAP crystal is useful and safe as a phosphorus fertilizer.

• Journal of Korea Society of Waste Management
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• v.35 no.8
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• pp.701-708
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• 2018

Chemical batch tests were conducted to investigate the amount of nutrients that were released from the wasted activated sludge during microwave heating. For this study, three types of activated sludge were obtained from $A_2/O$, MLE and oxidation ditch (OD) processes. Polyphosphate-accumulating organisms in the activated sludge have a unique trait: they releases phosphate from the cell when they are exposed to high temperatures. The sludge obtained from the $A_2/O$ process released the largest amount of phosphate, followed by those from the MLE and OD processes. The release of phosphate increased with increasing polyphosphate content in the sludge under strongly alkaline or acidic conditions. Furthermore, ammonia and heavy metals were released with phosphorous. The largest amount of ammonia was observed from the sludge obtained from the MLE process. The release of heavy metals strongly depends on the pH conditions. Therefore, the chemical analysis results strongly suggest that both phosphorus and ammonia react with $Mg^{2+}$ or $Ca^{2+}$ to form metal complexes such as magnesium ammonium phosphate or hydroxyapatite under alkaline conditions.

• 한국생물공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2000.04a
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• pp.105-108
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• 2000

Enhanced biological phosphorus removal (EBPR) is not always successfully achieved by anaerobic/aerobic operation. It has been reported that the EBPR deterioration was caused by the outgrowth of glycogen-accumulating organisms (GAO) over polyphosphate-accumulating organisms (PAO). It was found that pHcould be a tool which might induce the success of EBPR in a sequencing batch reactor (SBR) supplied with acetate. When the pH of anaerobic phase was controlled at 7.0, the operation resulted in failure of EBPR. However, when the pH of anaerobic phase increased up to 8.4, complete EBPR was achieved. We explained the mechanism of pH effect on the competition between GAO and PAO with experimental results and previously proposed biochemical models.

• 한국생물공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2000.11a
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• pp.77-80
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• 2000

Various analytical methods such as electron microscopy, quinone analysis, and 16S rDNA sequencing studies were used to investigate the microbial communities and to identify the microorganisms responsible for enhanced biological phosphorus removal (EBPR) in an anaerobic/aerobic sequencing batch reactor (SBR) fed with acetate. Electron photomicrographs showed that oval-shaped microorganisms of about $0.7\;{\sim}\;1\;{\mu}m$ in diameter dominated the microbial sludge. These microorganisms contained polyphosphate granules and glycogen inclusions, which suggests that they are a kind of phosphorus accumulating organism. Quinone and 16S rRNA sequence analyses showed that the members of Proteobacteria beta subclass were the most abundant species, which were affiliated with the Rhodocyclus-likes group. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that the two dominating clones of the beta subclass were most distantly related to Propionivibrio dicarboxylicus DSM 5885 and Rhodocyclus tenuis DSM 109 with about 95% and 96% sequence similarity, respectively. Therefore, it was concluded that the oval-shaped organisms related to the Rhodocyclus-likes group are likely to be responsible for biological phosphorus removal in SBR operation supplied with acetate.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.929-935
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• 2002

The 5-stage biological nutrient removal (BNR) process with step feed system showed a very stable organic carbon and nutrient removal efficiency ($87\%\;COD\,;79\%\;nitrogen,\;and\;87\%$ phosphorus) for an operation period of 2 years. In each stage at the pilot plant, microbial communities, which are important in removing nitrogen and phosphorus, were investigated using fluorescence in-situ hybridization (FISH) and 165 rDNA characterization. All tanks of 5-stage sludge had a similar composition of bacterial communities. The totat cell numbers of each reactor were found to be around $2.36-2.83{\times}10^9$ cells/ml. About $56.5-62.0\%$ of total 4,6-diamidino-2-phenylindol (DAPI) cells were hybridized to the bacterial-specific probe EUB388. Members of ${\beta}$-proteobacteria were the most abundant proteobacterial group, accounting for up to $20.6-26.7\%$. The high G+C Gram-positive bacterial group and Cytophaga-Flexibacter cluster counts were also found to be relatively high. The beta subclass proteobacteria did not accumulate a large amount of polyphosphate. The proportion of phosphorus-accumulating organisms (PAOs) in the total population of the sludge was almost $50\%$ in anoxic-1 tank. The high G+C Gram-positive bacteria and Cytophaga-Flexibacter cluster indicate a key role of denitrifying phosphorus-accumulating organisms (dPAOs). Both groups might be correlated with some other subclass of proteobacteria for enhancing nitrogen and phosphorus removal in this process.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.387-393
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• 2017

A chemical batch tests were conducted to evaluate if microwave heating enhances phosphorous release from waste activated sludge (WAS) at pH 2.5, 5, 7, 9 and 11. Polyphosphate-accumulating organisms have a unique physiological feature, which releases intracellular polyphosphate granules when they are exposed under high temperature environments. Microwave irradiation was found to encourage large amount of phosphorus release from WAS, depending on pH and temperature conditions. Most of phosphorus was released below $59^{\circ}C$ within 30 min. A marked increase in phosphorus release was observed under alkaline or acidic conditions. However, based on control tests for phosphorus release under different pH conditions without microwave heating, the largest amount of phosphorus released by microwave irradiation was found at pH 7, followed by 5, 9, 11. On the other hand, crystallization was conducted to obtain magnesium ammonium phosphate (MAP) from phosphate released by microwave heating at pH 7. X-ray diffraction analysis confirmed that the recovered crystalline materials were MAP. MAP is an environmentally friendly fertilizer, which slowly releases ammonia and phosphorus in response to the demand of plant root. Thus, the recovered MAP as a phosphate fertilizer is fully expected to play a important role in the reduction of agricultural non-point pollution.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.165-172
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• 2006

In order to analyze the bacterial community structure including P-removal related organisms, PAOs(polyphosphate accumulating organisms) and GAOs(glycogen-accumulating non-poly-P organisms) occurred in biological phosphate removing process, 2 reactors(SBR; sequencing batch reactor) were operated on different carbon sources(sodium acetate, glucose). For the analysis of bacterial community structure, molecular methods(FISH: fluorescent in situ hybridization and DGGE; denaturing gel gradient electrophoresis) were employed. After 100 days reaction, $PO_4-P$ in effluent dropped to 3.92 mg/L in SBR #1(60.8% removal) fed by sodium acetate, and at the same time FISH results showed that ${\beta}$-subclass proteobacteria(39.67%) and PAOs(45.10%) were dominantly present whereas those value in SBR #2 fed by glucose was 8.30 mg/L(17% removal), and ${\gamma}$-subclass proteobacteria were considerably observed(23.89%) and PAOs was 21.42%. Also the result of DGGE indicated that ${\beta}$-subclass proteobacteria was dominantly observed in SBR #1. However as the temperature increased, the proportion of ${\beta}$-subclass proteobacteria and PAOs decreased, but phosphorus removing inhibitors(GAOs) increased. It suggests that the environmental factor like as temperature and types of carbon source had influence on the prevalence of phosphorus removing organism(PAOs) and phosphorus removing inhibitors(GAOs) in biological phosphate removing process.