• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Agricultural Machinery Conference
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• 2017.04a
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• pp.122-122
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• 2017

Recently, environmental problems have become an area of growing interests. In-situ monitoring of water quality is fundamental to most environmental applications. The accurate measurement of nitrate concentrations is fundamental to understanding biogeochemistry in aquatic ecosystems. Several studies have reported that one of the most feasible methods to measure nitrate concentration is the use of Ion Selective-electrodes (ISEs). The ISE application to water monitoring has several advantages, such as direct measurement methodology, high sensitivity, wide measurement range, low cost, and portability. However, the ISE methods may yield inconsistent results where there was a difference in temperature between the calibration and measurement solutions, which is associated with the temperature dependence of ionic activity coefficients in solution. In this study, to investigate the potential of using the combination of a temperature sensor and nitrate ISEs for minimizing the effect of temperature on real-time nitrate sensing in natural water, a prototype of on-site water monitoring system was built, mainly consisting of a sensor chamber, an array of 3 ISEs, an waterproof temperature sensor, an automatic sampling system, and an arduino MCU board. The analog signals of ISEs were obtained using the second-order Sallen-key filter for performing voltage following, differential amplification, and low pass filtering. The performance test of the developed water nitrate sensing system was conducted in a monitoring station of drinking water located in Jeongseon, Kangwon. A temperature compensation method based on two-point normalization was proposed, which incorporated the determination of temperature coefficient values using regression equations relating solution temperature and electrode signal determined in our previous studies.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural Science
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• v.50 no.4
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• pp.883-902
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• 2023

Water is critical to the health and productivity of fruit trees. Efficient monitoring of water stress is essential for optimizing irrigation practices and ensuring sustainable fruit production. Short-range sensing can be reliable, rapid, inexpensive, and used for applications based on well-developed and validated algorithms. This paper reviews the recent advancement in fruit tree water stress detection via short-range sensing, which can be used for irrigation scheduling in orchards. Thermal imagery, near-infrared, and shortwave infrared methods are widely used for crop water stress detection. This review also presents research demonstrating the efficacy of short-range sensing in detecting water stress indicators in different fruit tree species. These indicators include changes in leaf temperature, stomatal conductance, chlorophyll content, and canopy reflectance. Short-range sensing enables precision irrigation strategies by utilizing real-time data to customize water applications for individual fruit trees or specific orchard areas. This approach leads to benefits, such as water conservation, optimized resource utilization, and improved fruit quality and yield. Short-range sensing shows great promise for potentially changing water stress monitoring in fruit trees. It could become a useful tool for effective fruit tree water stress management through continued research and development.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.863-871
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• 2007

Spectroscopic characteristics of river water from four major watersheds in the Ulsan area were measured to examine their potential for estimating water quality parameters. The total 176 river samples were collected from 44 sites of small streams within the watersheds during the year 2006. Spectroscopic characteristics investigated included protein-like fluorescence (FLF) intensity, fulvic-like fluorescence (FLF) intensity, terrestrial humic-like fluorescence (TLF) intensity, UV absorbance at 254 nm, and UV absorbance difference at 220 nm and 254 nm. Protein-like fluorescence intensity showed linear relationships with biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), chemical oxygen demand (COD), total phosphorous (TP) concentrations of the samples with the correlation of 0.784, 0.779, and 0.733, respectively. Due to the UV absorption characteristics of nitrate at 220 nm, UV absorbance difference at 220 nm and 254 nm was selected to represent total nitrogen (TN) concentration. Exclusion of some samples with PLF intensity higher than 5.0 improved the correlation between the UV absorbance difference and TN as demonstrated by the increase of the correlation coefficient from 0.392 to 0.784. Instead, for the samples with PLF intensity lower than 5.0, the highest correlation of TN was achieved with UV absorbance at 254 nm. The results suggest that PLF intensity could be used as the estimation index for BOD, COD, and TP concentration of river water, and as the primary screening index for the prediction of TN using UV absorbance difference. Some BOD-based water quality levels among the river water were statistically discriminated by the PLF intensity. Low p-values were obtained from the t-tests on the samples with the first level and the second level (p=0.0003) and the samples with the second and the third levels (p=0.0413). Our combined results demonstrated that the selected spectroscopic characteristics of river water could be utilized as a tool for on-site real-time monitoring and/or the primary estimation of water quality.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.373-381
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• 2012

An automatic flow and water quality monitoring system was applied to estimate pollutant loads to an urban stream during storm events in DTV (Daeduk Techno Valley), Daejeon, Korea. The monitoring system consists of rainfall gage, ultrasonic water level meter, water quality sensors for DO, temperature, pH, conductivity, turbidity and automatic water sampler for further laboratory analysis. All data are transmitted through on-line system and the monitoring system is designed to be controlled manually in the field and remotely from laboratory computer. Flow rates were verified with field measurements during storm events and showed good agreements. Automatic sampler was used to collect real time samples and analyzed for BOD, COD, TN, TP, SS and other pollutant concentrations in the laboratory. SWMM (Storm Water Management Model) urban watershed model was applied and calibrated using the observed flow and water quality data for the study area. While flow modeling results showed good agreement for all events, water quality modeling results showed variable levels of agreement. These results indicate that current options in the SWMM model to predict pollutant build up and wash-off effects are not sufficient to satisfy modeling of all the rainfall events under study and thus need further modification. This study showed the automatic monitoring system can be used to provide data to assist further refinement of modeling accuracy. This automatic stormwater monitoring and modeling system can be used to develop basin scale water quality management strategies of urban streams in storm events.

• Tribology and Lubricants
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.41-47
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• 2021

An experimental device was developed for analysis of hydraulic oil characteristics with dielectric constant sensors. Online analysis is the most effective method of the three methods used for analyzing lubricant oils. This is because it can monitor the machine condition effectively using oil sensors in real time without requiring excellent analysis skill and eliminates human errors. Determining the oil quality usually requires complex laboratory equipment for measuring factors such as density, viscosity, base number, acid number, water content, additive, and wear debris. However, the electric constant is another indicator of oil quality that can be measured on-site. The electric constant is the ratio of the capacitance of a capacitor using that material as a dielectric, compared with a similar capacitor that has a vacuum as its dielectric. The electric constant affects the factors such as the base oil, additive, temperature, electric field frequency, water content, and contaminants. In this study, the tendency of the electric constant is investigated with a variation of temperature, water content, and dust weight. The experimental device can control working temperature and mix the contaminants with oil. A machine condition monitoring program developed to analyze hydraulic oil is described. This program provides graph and digital values with variation of time. Moreover, it includes an alarm system for when the oil condition is bad.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2017.05a
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• pp.198-198
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• 2017

Climate change causes unpredictable and erratic climatic patterns which affects crop production in agriculture and threatens public health. To cope with the challenges of climate change, sustainable and sound growth environment for crop production should be secured. Recent attention has been given to the development of smart irrigation system using sensors and wireless network as a solution to achieve water conservation as well as improvement in crop yield and quality with less water and labor. This study developed the smart irrigation technique for farmlands by monitoring the soil moisture contents and real-time climate condition for decision-making support. Central to this design is micro-controller which monitors the farm condition and controls the distribution of water on the farm. In addition, a series of laboratory studies were conducted to determine the optimal irrigation pattern, one time versus plug time. This smart technique allows farmers to reduce water use, improve the efficiency of irrigation systems, produce more yields and better quality of crops, reduce fertilizer and pesticide application, improve crop uniformity, and prevent soil erosion which eventually reduce the nonpoint source pollution discharge into aquatic-environment.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.39 no.6
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• pp.451-464
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• 2023

Harmful cyanobacterial monitoring is time-consuming and requires skilled professionals. Recently, Phycocyanin, the accessory pigment unique to freshwater cyanobacteria, has been proposed as an indicator for the presence of cyanobacteria, with the advantage of rapid and simple measurement. The purpose of this research was to evaluate the correlation between the harmful cyanobacterial cell density and the concentration of phycocyanin and to consider how to use the real-time water quality monitoring system for algae bloom monitoring. In the downstream of the Nakdong River, Microcystis spp. showed maximum cell density (99 %) in harmful cyanobacteria (four target genera). A strong correlation between phycocyanin(measured in the laboratory) concentrations and harmful cyanobacterial cell density was observed (r = 0.90, p < 0.001), while a weaker relationship (r = 0.65, p < 0.001) resulted between chlorophyll a concentration and harmful cyanobacterial cell density. As a result of comparing the phycocyanin concentration (measured in submersible fluorescence sensor) and harmful cyanobacterial cell density, the error range increased as the number of cyanobacteria cells increased. Before opening the estuary bank, the diurnal variations of phycocyanin concentrations did not mix by depth, and in the case of the surface layer, a pattern of increase and decrease over time was shown. This study is the result of analysis when Microcystis spp. is dominant in downstream of Nakdong River in summer, therefore the correlation between the harmful cyanobacteria density and phycocyanin concentrations should be more generalized through spatio-temporal expansion.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.87-91
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• 2019

The diagnosis of the failure for the existing electrical facilities was based on regular preventive maintenance, but this preventive maintenance was limited in preventing a lot of cost loss and sudden system failure. To overcome these shortcomings, fault prediction and diagnostic techniques are critical to increasing system reliability by monitoring electrical installations in real time and detecting abnormal conditions in the facility early. As the performance and quality deterioration problem occurs frequently due to the increase in the number of users of the motor pump, the purpose is to build an intelligent control system that can control the motor pump to maximize the performance and to improve the quality and reliability. To this end, a vibration sensor, temperature sensor, pressure sensor, and low water level sensor are used to detect vibrations, temperatures, pressures, and low water levels that can occur in the motor pump, and to build a system that can identify and diagnose information to users in real time.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.154-164
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• 2021

In this study, the IoT sensor technology required for improving the survival rate and high-density productivity of individual shrimp in smart shrimp farming (which involves the usage of recirculating aquaculture systems and biofloc technology) was analyzed. The principles and performances of domestic and overseas water quality monitoring IoT sensors were compared. Furthermore, the drawbacks of existing aquaculture monitoring technologies and the countermeasures for future aquaculture monitoring technologies were examined. In particular, for farming white-legged shrimp, an IoT sensor was employed to collect measurement indicators for managing the water quality environment in real-time, and the IoT sensor-based real-time monitoring technology was then analyzed for implementing the optimal farming environment. The results obtained from this study can potentially contribute to the realization of an autonomous farming platform that can improve the survival rate and productivity of shrimp, achieve feed reduction, improve the water quality environment, and save energy.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.109-117
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• 2024

In this study, various pre-treatment methods were evaluated for microalgae separation. These methods aimed to facilitate safe, rapid, and cost-effective online imaging for real-time observation and cell counting. As pre-treatment techniques, heating, chemical hydrolysis, heating combined with chemical hydrolysis, and sonication were employed. The effectiveness of these methods was evaluated in the context of online imaging quality through experimentation on cultivated microalgae (Chlorella vulgaris and Scenedesmus quadricauda). The chemical treatment method was found to be inappropriate for improving image acquisition. The heating pre-treatment method exhibited a drawback of prolonged cell dispersion time. Additionally, the heating combined with chemical hydrolysis method was confirmed to have the lowest dispersion effect for Chlorella vulgaris. Conversely, ultrasonication emerged as a promising technique for microalgae separation in terms of repeatability and reproducibility. This study suggests the potential for selecting optimal pre-treatment methods to effectively operate real-time online monitoring devices, paving the way for future research and applications in microalgae cultivation and imaging.