• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.54 no.spc1
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• pp.1037-1051
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• 2021

Biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) concentration, one of important water quality indicators, is treated as the measuring item for the ecological chapter in lakes and rivers. This investigation employed novel two-stage hybrid paradigm (i.e., wavelet-based gated recurrent unit, wavelet-based generalized regression neural networks, and wavelet-based random forests) to predict BOD concentration in the Dosan and Hwangji stations, South Korea. These models were assessed with the corresponding independent models (i.e., gated recurrent unit, generalized regression neural networks, and random forests). Diverse water quality and quantity indicators were implemented for developing independent and two-stage hybrid models based on several input combinations (i.e., Divisions 1-5). The addressed models were evaluated using three statistical indices including the root mean square error (RMSE), Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE), and correlation coefficient (CC). It can be found from results that the two-stage hybrid models cannot always enhance the predictive precision of independent models confidently. Results showed that the DWT-RF5 (RMSE = 0.108 mg/L) model provided more accurate prediction of BOD concentration compared to other optimal models in Dosan station, and the DWT-GRNN4 (RMSE = 0.132 mg/L) model was the best for predicting BOD concentration in Hwangji station, South Korea.

• Journal of the Korean Applied Science and Technology
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.34-41
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• 2022

As the use of chemical products increases in daily life, the removal of dye waste has also emerged as an important environmental issue. This dye waste can be decomposed using a photocatalyst, and the photocatalyst can be synthesized very cost-effectively by using the sol-gel technology. The sol-gel technology is not only very useful for nanoscale film formation, but also can simply form multilayer structures. Using a multiple spin coating method, in this study, a ZnO film with a multilayered structure (3 layers, 5 layers) was formed by using zinc oxide (ZnO), which is effective in decomposing various dyes. For performance comparison, a ZnO film having a single layer structure by a single spin coating method was prepared as a control. Structural and elemental analysis of ZnO film was performed using an X-ray diffraction analyzer and an energy dispersive X-ray spectrometer. A nanowire-like surface morphology could be observed through a scanning electron microscope. Additionally, UV-Vis spectrophotometer was used to measure the absorbance of UV light. The ZnO film with a five-layer structure degraded the simulated methylene blue by 49% more than the ZnO film with a single-layer structure. In conclusion, it was found that ZnO having a multilayered structure is useful as a photocatalyst that decomposes methylene blue dye more effectively.