• Journal of the Korea Organic Resources Recycling Association
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.63-75
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• 2004

This research sought to determine the status of the installation and operation of domestic public resource-making facilities of resource-making facilities and come up with corresponding improvement measures. Currently compost is most numerous set-up out of facilties already established ever since, then the rest of them are feeds, anaerobic degradation, sewage combination, and combination of compost and feeds in order. As such, food waste is processed more into compost than into feeds, presumably because relevant facilities, which were originally designed for processing into feeds, were converted into composting facilities due to little demand for the processed feeds. The finding says that many related firms had yet to register their businesses in accordance with feeds and fertilizers management laws, and that food waste resources-making facilities used various basic facilities but few of them treated food waste in linkage with leaching water, bad odors, and energy. Some of current facilities were found to be 7 years old and thus outdated. Due to lack of skilled operational manpower, many facilities had less than 300 days of normal operation yearly, and some needed minor and serious repairs periodically. In overall facilities, 87% of the planned food waste was rolled in, thus requiring measures to treat the whole planned volume. For costs of resource-making facilities, some with a capacity of below 50 tons topped 100 million won, and facilities with a capacity of over 50 tons required less installation costs. Overall, installation costs ranged from 10 million to 20 million, and to 200 million won per ton, and this suggests a need to establish the installation cost calculation criteria, as well as to reshape the facility criteria. With operating costs varying greatly according to the size and treatment methods of facilities, the finding indicates a need to rationalize the operating costs, and to plan appropriate-size installation and operation of facilities to ensure economic operation.

• Clean Technology
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.33-38
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• 2021

Demand for lithium-based secondary batteries is greatly increasing with the explosive growth of related industries, such as mobile devices and electric vehicles. In Korea, there are several top-rated global lithium-ion battery manufacturers accounting for 40% of the global secondary battery business. Most discarded lithium secondary batteries are recycled as scrap to recover valuable metals, such as Nickel and Cobalt, but residual wastes are disposed of according to the residual lithium-ion concentration. Furthermore, there has not been an attempt on the possibility of water discharge system contamination due to the concentration of lithium ions, and the effluent water quality standards of public sewage treatment facilities are becoming stricter year after year. In this study, the as-received waste water generated from the cathode electrode coating process in the manufacturing of high-nickel-based NCM cathode material used for high-performance and long-term purposes was analyzed. We suggested a facile recycling process chart for waste water treatment. We revealed a correlation between lithium-ion concentration and pH effect according to the proposed waste water of each recycling process through analyzing standard water quality tests and daphnia ecological toxicity. We proposed a realistic waste water treatment plan for lithium electrode manufacturing plants via comparison with other industries' ecotoxicology.

• Clean Technology
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.31-38
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• 2023

Due to water shortages caused by water pollution and climate change, total organic carbon (TOC) standards have been implemented for wastewater discharged from public sewage treatment facilities. Furthermore, there is a growing interest and body of research pertaining to the reuse of sewage treatment water as a secure alternative water resource. The membrane bio-reactor (MBR) method is commonly used for advanced wastewater treatment because it can remove organic and inorganic ions and it does not require or emit any chemicals. However, the MBR process uses a separation membrane (MF), which requires frequent film cleaning due to fouling caused by a high concentration of mixed liquor suspended solid (MLSS). In this study, process improvement and microbubble cleaning efficiency were evaluated to improve the differential pressure, water flow, and MF fouling, which are the biggest disadvantages of operating the MF. The existing MBR method was improved by installing a precipitation tank between the air tank and the MBR tank in which raw water was introduced. Microbubbles were injected into a separation membrane tank into which the supernatant water from the precipitation tank was introduced. The microbubble generator was operated with a 15 day on, 15 day off cycle for 5 months to collect discharged water samples (4L) and measure TOC. As the supernatant water from the precipitation tank flowed into the separation membrane tank, about 95% of the supernatant water MLSS was removed so the MF fouling from biological contamination was prevented. Due to the application of microbubbles to supernatant water from the precipitation tank, the differential pressure of the separation membrane tank decreased by 1.6 to 2.3 times and the water flow increased by 1.4 times. Applying microbubbles increased the TOC removal rate by more than 58%. This study showed that separately operating the air tank and the separation membrane tank can reduce fouling, and suggested that applying additional microbubbles could improve the differential pressure, water flow, and fouling to provide a more efficient advanced treatment method.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.21 no.7
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• pp.708-718
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• 2020

Offensive odor is recognized as a social environmental problem due to its olfactory effects. Ammonia(NH₃), hydrogen sulfide(H₂S) and benzene(C₆H₆) are produced from various petrochemical plants, public sewage treatment plants, public livestock wastes, and food waste disposal facilities in large quantities. Therefore efficient decomposition of offensive odor is needed. In this study, the removal efficiency of atmospheric-pressure plasma operating at an ambient condition was investigated by evaluating the concentrations at upflow and downflow between the plasma reactor. The decomposition of offensive odor using plasma is based on the mechanism of photochemical oxidation of offensive odor using free radical and ozone(O₃) generated when discharging plasma, which enables the decomposition of offensive odor at ordinary temperature and has the advantage of no secondary pollutants. As a result, all three odor substances were completely decontaminated within 1 minute as soon as discharging the plasma up to 500 W. This result confirms that high concentration odors or mixed odor materials can be reduced using atmospheric-pressure plasma.