• Journal of the Korean Electrochemical Society
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.77-81
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• 2005

Porous-composite electrodes have been developed using silica gel, which reduce carbon aerogel usage with high cost. Silica gel powder was added to the carbon aerogel to simplify the manufacturing procedure and to increase the wet-ability, the mechanical strength and the CDI efficiency. Porous composite electrodes composed of carbon aerogel and silica gel powder were prepared by paste rolling method. Carbon aerosol composite electrodes with $10\times10cm^2$ are placed face to face between spacers, and assembled the four-stage series cells for CDI process. Each stage is composed of 45 cells. Four-stage series cells (flow through cells) for CDI process are put in continuous-system reactor containing 1,000ml-NaCl solution bath of 1,000 ppm. The four-stage series cells with carbon aerogel electrodes are charged at 1.2V and are discharged at 0.001V, and then read the current. Conclusively, removal efficiencies of ions using the four-stage series cells composed of carbon aerogel composite electrodes show good removal efficiency of $99\%$ respectively.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.1-9
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• 1995

This study was carried to investigate the biodegradability of phenol in the wastewater with the two sludge blanket-packed bed reactor in series. Each reactor had a dimension of 0.09 m i.d. and 1.5 m height and consisted of two regions. The lower region was a sludge blanket of 0.5 m height and the upper region was a packed-bed of 1 m height. The packed bed region was charged with ceramic raschig rings of 10 mm i.d., 15 mm o.d. and 20 mm length. The reactors were operated at 35$\circ$C and the hydraulic retention time(HRT) was maintained 24 hours. The synthetic wastewater composed of glucose and phenol as major components was fed into the reactor in a continuous mode with incereasing phenol concentration. In addition, the nutrient trace metals($Na^+, Mg^{2+}, Ca^{2+}, PO_4^{3-}, NH_4^+, Co^{2+}, Fe^{2+}$ etc.) were added for growing anaerobes. The phenol concentration of the effluent, the overall gas production, the composition of product gas, the efficiency of COD reduction and the duration of acclimation period were measured to determine the performance of the anaerobic wastewater treatment system as the phenol concentration of the influent was increased from 600 to 2400 mg//l. Successfully stable biodegradation of phenol could be achieved with the anaerobic treatment system from 600 to 1, 800 mg/l of the influent phenol concentration. The upper level of influent phenol loading was high enough to meet most of the practical requirement. The duration of acclimation increased with the phenol loading. At steady state of the influent phenol concentration of 1800 mg/l, the treatment performance indicated the phenol reduction efficiency of 99%, the COD reduction efficiency of 99% and the gas production rate of 37 l/day. At the influent phenol concentration of 2400 mg/l, however, the operation of the treatment system was noted unstable. While the concentration of methane in biogas decreased with increasing the influent phenol loading, the carbon dioxide was increased. However, the concentration of hydrogen was varied negligibly. The concentration of methane was high enough to be used as a fuel. As a result, it is suggested that anaerobic phenol wastewater treament was economical in the sense of energy recovery and wastewater treatment.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.12
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• pp.4357-4366
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• 2023

MARS-KS, a domestic regulatory confirmatory code of Republic of Korea, had been developed by integrating RELAP5/MOD2 and COBRA-TF. The integration of COBRA-TF allowed to extend the capability of MARS-KS, limited to one-dimensional analysis, to multi-dimensional analysis. The use of COBRA-TF was mainly focused on subchannel analyses for simulating multi-dimensional behavior within the reactor core. However, this feature has been remained as a legacy without ongoing maintenance. Meanwhile, MARS-KS also includes its own multidimensional component, namely MULTID, which is also feasible to simulate three-dimensional convection and diffusion. The MULTID is capable of modeling the turbulent diffusion using simple mixing length model. The implementation of the turbulent mixing is of importance for analyzing the reactor core where a disturbing cross-sectional structure of rod bundle makes the flow perturbation and corresponding mixing stronger. In addition, the presence of this turbulent behavior allows the secondary transports with net mass exchange between subchannels. However, a series of assessments performed in previous studies revealed that the turbulence model of the MULTID could not simulate the aforementioned effective mixing occurred in the subchannel-scale problems. This is obvious consequence since the physical models of the MULTID neglect the effect of mass transport and thereby, it cannot model the void drift effect and resulting phasic distribution within a bundle. Thus, in this study, the turbulence mixing model of the MULTID has been improved by means of the inter-channel mixing model, widely utilized in subchannel analysis, in order to extend the application of the MULTID to small-scale problems. A series of assessments has been performed against rod bundle experiments, namely GE 3X3 and PSBT, to evaluate the performance of the introduced mixing model. The assessment results revealed that the application of the inter-channel mixing model allowed to enhance the prediction of the MULTID in subchannel scale problems. In addition, it was indicated that the code could not predict appropriate phasic distribution in the rod bundle without the model. Considering that the proper prediction of the phasic distribution is important when considering pin-based and/or assembly-based expressions of the reactor core, the results of this study clearly indicate that the inter-channel mixing model is required for analyzing the rod bundle, appropriately.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.30 no.8
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• pp.1227-1234
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• 2020

In this study, yeast cell immobilization was carried out in a packed bed reactor (PBR) to investigate the effects of the volumetric capacity of carriers as well as the different fermentation modes on fuel ethanol production. An optimal volumetric capacity of 10 g/l was found to obtain a high cell concentration. The productivity of immobilized cell fermentation was 16% higher than that of suspended-cell fermentation in batch and it reached a higher value of 4.28 g/l/h in repeated batches. Additionally, using this method, the ethanol yield (95.88%) was found to be higher than that of other tested methods due to low concentrations of residual sugars and free cells. Continuous ethanol production using four bioreactors showed a higher productivity (9.57 g/l/h) and yield (96.96%) with an ethanol concentration of 104.65 g/l obtained from 219.42 g/l of initial total sugar at a dilution rate of 0.092 h^-1. Furthermore, we reversed the substrate-feed flow directions in the in-series bioreactors to keep the cells at their highest activity and to extend the length of continuous fermentation. Our study demonstrates an effective method of ethanol production with a new immobilized approach, and that by switching the flow directions, traditional continuous fermentation can be greatly improved, which could have practical and broad implications in industrial applications.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.2314-2320
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• 2015

MBR (Membrane Bio-Reactor) process is known to consume enormous energy to control membrane fouling. To solve this problem, electro-coagulation technique has been applied to MBR. A series of electro-coagulation was applied to activated sludge suspension under different current density condition. After the electro-coagulations, membrane filtration of the activated sludge suspensions was conducted to investigate the effect of electro-coagulation on the fouling. As current density increased 10 to 40A/m2, the total fouling resistance (Rc+Rf) decreased from 18 to 79%, showing that the electro-coagulation improved the membrane filtration efficiency. Both the organic concentration in bulk and the particles size distribution were not nearly changed before and after the electro-coagulation. The enhanced filtration efficiency might be due to the aluminum hydroxide generated from chemical precipitation, which can be acted as a dynamic membrane preventing a deposition of foulants on membrane surfaces.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.756-763
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• 2001

In the process of integrity evaluation for nuclear power plant components, a series of fracture mechanics evaluation on surface cracks in reactor pressure vessel(RPV) must be conducted. These fracture mechanics evaluation are based on stress intensity factor, K. However, under pressurized thermal shock(PTS) conditions, the combination of thermal and mechanical stress by steep temperature gradient and internal pressure causes considerably high tensile stress at the inside of RPV wall. Besides, the internal pressure during the normal operation produces high tensile stress at the RPV wall. As a result, cracks on inner surface of RPVs may experience elastic-plastic behavior which can be explained with J-integral. In such a case, however, J-integral may possibly lose its validity due to constraint effect. In this paper, in order to verify the suitability of J-integral, tow dimensional finite element analyses were applied for various surface cracks. A total of 18 crack geometries were analyzed, and $\Omega$ stresses were obtained by comparing resulting HRR stress distribution with corresponding actual stress distributions. In conclusion, HRR stress fields were found to overestimate the actual crack-tip stress field due to constraint effect.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.25 no.12
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• pp.1887-1897
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• 2001

Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) launched an intermediate scale steam explosion experiment named "Test for Real Corium Interaction with water (TROI)" using reactor material to investigate whether the molten reactor material would lead to energetic steam explosion when interacted wish cold water at low pressure. The melt-water interaction experiment is performed in a pressure vessel with the multi-dimensional fuel and water pool geometry. The novel concept of cold crucible technology, where powder of the reactor material in a water-cooled cafe is heated by high frequency induction, is firstly implemented for the generation of molten fuel. In this paper, the lest facility and cold crucible technology are introduced and the results or the first series of tests were discussed. The 5 kg of molten ZrO$_2$jet was poured into the 67cm deep water pool at 30 ∼ 95 $\^{C}$. Either spontaneous steam explosions or quenching was observed. The morphology of debris and pressure wave profiles clearly indicate the differences between the two cases.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.368-372
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• 2016

Background: Methodologies for a series of radiological consequence assessments show a distinctive difference according to the design principles of the original nuclear suppliers and their technical standards to be imposed. This is due to the uncertainties of the accidental source term, radionuclide behavior in the environment, and subsequent radiological dose. Both types of PWR and PHWR are operated in Korea. However, technical standards for evaluating atmospheric dispersion have been enacted based on the U.S. NRC's positions regardless of the reactor types. For this reason, it might cause a controversy between the licensor and licensee of a nuclear power plant. Materials and Methods: It was modelled under the framework of the NRC Regulatory Guide 1.145 for light-water reactors, reflecting the features of heavy-water reactors as specified in the Canadian National Standard and the modelling features in MACCS2, such as atmospheric diffusion coefficient, ground deposition, surface roughness, radioactive plume depletion, and exposure from ground deposition. Results and Discussion: An integrated accident consequence assessment code, ACCESS (Accident Consequence Assessment Code for Evaluating Site Suitability), was developed by taking into account the unique regulatory positions for reactor types under the framework of the current Korean technical standards. Field tracer experiments and hand calculations have been carried out for validation and verification of the models. Conclusion: The modelling approaches of ACCESS and its features are introduced, and its applicative results for a hypothetical accidental scenario are comprehensively discussed. In an applicative study, the predicted results by the light-water reactor assessment model were higher than those by other models in terms of total doses.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.339-364
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• 2010

Following a joint OECD/NEA-IAEA-sponsored meeting to define the current role and future perspectives of the application of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to nuclear reactor safety problems, three Writing Groups were created, under the auspices of the NEA working group WGAMA, to produce state-of-the-art reports on different aspects of the subject. The work of the second group, WG2, was to document the existing assessment databases for CFD simulation in the context of Nuclear Reactor Safety (NRS) analysis, to gain a measure of the degree of quality and trust in CFD as a numerical analysis tool, and to take initiatives to extend the existing databases. The group worked over the period of 2003-2007 and produced a final state-of-the-art report. The present paper summarises the material gathered during the study, illustrating the points with a few highlights. A total of 22 safety issues were identified for which the application of CFD was considered to potentially bring real benefits in terms of better understanding and increased safety. A list of the existing databases was drawn up and synthesised, both from the nuclear area and from other parallel, non-nuclear, industrial activities. The gaps in the technology base were also identified and discussed. In order to initiate new ways of bringing experimentalists and numerical analysts together, an international workshop -- CFD4NRS (the first in a series) -- was organised, a new blind benchmark activity was set up based on turbulent mixing in T-junctions, and a Wiki-type web portal was created to offer online access to the material put together by the group giving the reader the opportunity to update and extend the contents to keep the information source topical and dynamic.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.8
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• pp.2696-2707
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• 2021

The purpose of this study is to investigate the efficiency of various structural modeling schemes for evaluating seismic performances and fragility of the reactor containment building (RCB) structure in the advanced power reactor 1400 (APR1400) nuclear power plant (NPP). Four structural modeling schemes, i.e. lumped-mass stick model (LMSM), solid-based finite element model (Solid FEM), multi-layer shell model (MLSM), and beam-truss model (BTM), are developed to simulate the seismic behaviors of the containment structure. A full three-dimensional finite element model (full 3D FEM) is additionally constructed to verify the previous numerical models. A set of input ground motions with response spectra matching to the US NRC 1.60 design spectrum is generated to perform linear and nonlinear time-history analyses. Floor response spectra (FRS) and floor displacements are obtained at the different elevations of the structure since they are critical outputs for evaluating the seismic vulnerability of RCB and secondary components. The results show that the difference in seismic responses between linear and nonlinear analyses gets larger as an earthquake intensity increases. It is observed that the linear analysis underestimates floor displacements while it overestimates floor accelerations. Moreover, a systematic assessment of the capability and efficiency of each structural model is presented thoroughly. MLSM can be an alternative approach to a full 3D FEM, which is complicated in modeling and extremely time-consuming in dynamic analyses. Specifically, BTM is recommended as the optimal model for evaluating the nonlinear seismic performance of NPP structures. Thereafter, linear and nonlinear BTM are employed in a series of time-history analyses to develop fragility curves of RCB for different damage states. It is shown that the linear analysis underestimates the probability of damage of RCB at a given earthquake intensity when compared to the nonlinear analysis. The nonlinear analysis approach is highly suggested for assessing the vulnerability of NPP structures.