• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.397-403
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• 2012

Galactose, an isomer of glucose with an opposite hydroxyl group at the 4-carbon, is a major fermentable sugar in various promising feedstock for hydrogen production including red algal biomass. In this study, hydrogen production characteristics of galactose-glucose mixture were investigated using batch fermentation experiments with heat-treated digester sludge as inoclua. Galactose showed a hydogen yield compatible with glucose. However, more complicated metabolic steps for galactose utilization caused a slower hydrogen production rate. The existence of glucose aggravated the hydrogen production rate, which would result from the regulation of galactose-utilizing enzymes by glucose. Hydrogen produciton rate at galactose to glucose ratio of 8:2 or 6:4 was 67% of the production rate for galactose and 33% for glucose, which could need approximately 1.5 and 3 times longer hydraulic retention time than galacgtose only condition and glucose only condition, respectively, in continuous fermentation. Hydrogen production rate, Hydrogen yield, and organic acid production at galactose to glucose ratio of 8:2 or 6:4 were 0.14 mL H2/mL/hr, 0.78 mol $H_2$/mol sugar, and 11.89 g COD/L, respectively. Galactose-rich biomass could be usable for hydogen fermenation, however, the fermentation time should be allowed enough.

• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.257-264
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• 2006

An aerobic submerged membrane bioreactor (MBR) treating ammonium wastewater was studied in respect of nitrification characteristics and distribution of nitrification bacteria over a period of 350 days. MBR was fed with ammonium concentration of 500-1000 mg $NH_4-N/L$ at a nitrogen load of $1-2kg\;N/m^3{\cdot}d$. Overall ammonium oxidation rate increased with dissolved oxygen (DO) concentration, temperature, and sludge retention time (SRT). Under a higher concentration of free ammonia ($NH_3-N$) due to the decrease of ammonium oxidation rate, the nitrite ratio ($NO_2-N/NO_x-N$) in the effluent increased. The sudden collapse of nitrification efficiency accompanied by sludge foaming and the increase of sludge volume index (SVI) was observed unexpectedly during the operation. At the later stage of operation, additional carbon source was fed to the MBR and resulted in twice higher value of SVI and the decrease of ammonium oxidation rate. In fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) analysis, genus Nitrosomonas which is specifically hybridized with probe NSM156 was initially the dominant ammonia oxidizing bacteria and the amount of Nitrosospira gradually increased. Nitrospira was the dominant nitrite oxidizing bacteria during whole operational period. Significant amount of Nitrobacter was also detected which might due to the high concentration of nitrite maintained in the reactor.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.429-437
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• 2007

This study aims to develop a sulfur-using denitrification process which is possible a renovation to advanced treatment plant submerging a simple module in activated sludge aeration tank. At first, the impact factor of sulfur-using denitrification was appreciated by the batch test. Secondly, reflecting a dissolved oxygen effect of sulfur-using denitrification that was confirmed by the batch test, in a continuous nitrification/sulfur-using denitrification, high-rate nitrogen removal reaction was induced at optimum condition controlling DO concentration according to phases. Also, inside and outside of sulfur-using denitrification module was covered with microfilter and the module was considered as an alternative of clarifier. Result of batch test for sulfur-using denitrification, $NO_2{^-}N$ was lower for consumption of alkalinity and sulfur than that of $NO_3{^-}-N$. These results revealed the accordance of theoretical prediction. In continuous nitrification/sulfur-using denitrification experiment, actual wastewater was used as a influent, and influent nitrogen loading rates were increased 0.04, 0.07, 0.11, $0.14kg\;N/m^3-day$ by changing hydraulic retention times. At this time, nitrogen loading rates of packed sulfur were increased 0.23, 0.46, 0.69, $0.93kg\;N/m^3-day$. As a result, nitrification efficiency was about 100% and denitrification efficiency was 93, 81, 79, 72%. Accordingly, nitrogen removal was a high-rate. Also the module of sulfur-using denitrification covered with microfilter did not make a fouling phenomena according to increased flux. And the module was achieved effluent suspended solids of below 10 mg/L without a clarifier. In conclusion, it is possible a renovation to advanced treatment plant submerging a simple module packed sulfur in activated sludge aeration tank of traditional facilities. And the plant used the module packed sulfur is expected as a effective facilities of high-rate and the smallest.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.583-588
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• 2004

This research examined the treatment efficiency and methane production rate in treating slurry-type swine waste using UASB (upflow anaerobic sludge blanket) reactor. The UASB reactor was operated at an organics volumetric loading rate (VLR) of $2.6-15.7kgCOD/m^3/day$. A stepwise increase of the VLR resulted in a temporary deterioration in the COD removal rate in UASB reactor but recovered quickly. The COD removal rate were 65-70% for VLR up to $5 kgCOD/m^3/day$. When organics VLR was $10kgCOD/m^3/day$, the COD removal rate decreased sharply and there was loss of 17.537g of the seeding biomass due to sludge washout. This result indicated that the UASB system cannot be adapted to more than $10kgCOD/m^3/day$ of VLR. As the organic load increased from 2.6 to $15.7kgCOD/m^3/d$, the biogas production rate varied from 3.2 to 10.8 L/d and the methane conversion rate of the organic matter varied from 0.30 to $0.23m^3CH_4/kg\;COD_{removed}$. The methane content showed the range of 70.1-81.5% during the experimental period. The volatile solids (VS) removal efficiency was similar at the low VLR (< $5 kgCOD/m^3/day$), but it decreased sharply at the high VLR (> $5 kgCOD/m^3/day$). The VS reduction rate was, moreover, large those of COD. The result shows that hydraulic retention time above 2 days is essential in case of treating wastewater containing 1% of solids.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.457-465
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• 2004

The objective of this study is to evaluate the possibility to apply the Moving Bed Biofilm Reactor(MBBR) in the activated sludge treatment process with existing aerobic HRT. Optimal operation conditions were assumed according to the analysis of organic matter and nutrients removal efficiencies depending on loading variations. The process was operated under different conditions: RUN I(HRT=7.14hr, $I{\cdot}R=100%$), RUN II(HRT=6.22hr, $I{\cdot}R=100%$), RUN III(HRT=6.22 hr, $I{\cdot}R=150%$), RUN IV(HRT=6.22hr, $I{\cdot}R=200%$), the TBOD removal efficien cies are 88%, 88.5%, 94.6%, 97.6%, respectively. Overall TSS removal efficiency is 90%, and it is increasing in RUN IV. In the case of Nitrogen, the highest removal efficiency of 90% was observed in RUN III and RUN IV, Nitrification and Denitrification rates are 0.013-0.016kg $NH_3-N/kg$ Mv-d and 0.009-0.019kg $NO_3/kg$ Mv-d, respectively. Phosphorus removal efficiencies are 89.6% in RUN I, 91.5% in RUN II, 84.3% in RUN III, and 76.4% in RUN IV. The process under shorter SRT yields better performance in terms of phosphorus removal. It was noticed that to achieve the effluent phosphorus concentration ofless than 1mg/L and removal efficiency higher than 80%, SRT should not be longer than 10 days. Experimental result shows that HRT of 6.22 hours is suitable for this treatment process, and, as a result, the aerobic reactor including moving media and DO depletion tank have a sufficient effect to the process performance.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.939-947
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• 2000

Enhanced biological phosphorus removal (EBPR) was performed in an anaerobic/aerobic sequencing batch reactor (SBR). Influent was a synthetic wastewater based on acetate as a carbon source. The sludge age and hydraulic retention time were kept at 10 days and 16 hrs, respectively, Phosphate release during the anaerobic period and phosphate uptake in aerobic period were increased gradually with time. and after about 200 days, steady-state operation could be achieved with complete removal of influent phosphate. Number distribution of microbial community in the sludge performing EBPR was investigated during the steady state operation. 17 rRNA targeted oligonucleotide probes were designed and slot hybridization technique was used to determine the number distribution of each microorganism. In the acetate fed SBR, rRNA belonging to the beta subclass of proteobacteria was the most dominant in total rRNA and rRNA matching to CTE probe was the second, rRNAs of Acinetobacter, Aeromonas and Pseudomonas, which are usually thought as phosphorus accumulating organisms in EBPR processes, constituted less than 10% of total rRNA. From this community analysis, it was inferred that microorganisms belong to the beta subclass of proteobacteia (BET) and CTE such as Rhodocyclus group were important in biological phosphorus removal. Therefore, the role of Acinetobacter, Aeromonas and Pseudomonas in the EBPR might have been overestimated.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.195-206
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• 2014

Immobilization of anaerobic ammonium oxidizing bacteria has been studied to enhance the biomass retention of the slowly growing bacteria and the process stability. The purpose of this study was to compare the nitrogen removal efficiency of granular and immobilized anammox bacteria with poly vinyl alcohol and alginate. The specific anammox activity of the granular, homoginized and immobilized anammox bacteria were $0.016{\pm}0.0002gN/gVSS/d$, $0.011{\pm}0.001gN/gVSS/d$ and $0.007{\pm}0.0005gN/gVSS/d$, respectively. Although the activity decreased to 43.7 % of the original one due to low pH and $O_2$ exposure during the homogination and the immobilization, it was rapidly recovered within 7 days in the following continuous culture. When synthetic T-N concentrations of 100, 200, 400, 800 mg/L were fed, the immobilized anammox bacteria showed higher nitrogen removal efficiencies at all operational conditions than those of granular anammox bacteria. When the sludge retention time was shorten below 30.7 days and the reject water was fed, the nitrite removal efficiency of the granular anammox bacteria dropped to 8 % of the initial value, while that of the immobilized anammox bacteria was maintained over 95 % of the initial one. The immobilization with poly vinyl alcohol and alginate would be a feasible method to improve the performance and stability of the anammox process.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.31-44
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• 1985

The application of anaerobic attached microbial films in the expanded bed process has recently been examined at high temperatures ($55^{\circ}C$) and with particulate matter. Extrapolation of the kinetics suggested that waste activated sludge (WAS) could be efficiently digested at hydraulic retention times as short as six hours in the expanded bed process. This would represent a 99 percent digester reactor volume reduction and would introduce interesting solids management alternatives if such a high rate process were developed. This paper presents a summary of a 1.5 year study of the feasibility of such a process. Three continuously fed $55^{\circ}C$ laboratory reactor systems were used to define the kinetics and the site of reactions-control completely mixed reactors were compared to the expanded beds (AAFEB) with and without a hydrolysis unit preceding the attached film unit. Well defined laboratory-generated WAS was compared to actual WAS from a domestic sewage treatment facility. Sixty percent of the biodegradable organics were converted in an AAFEB at a 15-hour hydraulic retention time without hydrolysis, whereas greater than 95 perccent of the biodegradable organics were stabilized in a two-stage system consisting of a 3-day HRT hydrolysis reactor followed by a 15-hour HRT AAFEB. The limitations of this high rate process and its potential application are discussed.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.223-231
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• 2012

The purpose of this study is to investigate basically the mechanism of heat transfer by the resolution of complex fluid flow inside a sophisticated designed screw dryer for the treatment of sewage sludge by using numerical analysis and experimental study. By doing this, the result was quite helpful to obtain the design criteria for enhancing drying efficiency, thereby achieving the optimal design of a multiple screw type dryer for treating inorganic and organic sludge wastes. One notable design feature of the dryer was to bypass a certain of fraction of the hot combustion gases into the bottom of the screw cylinder, by the fluid flow induction, across the delicately designed holes on the screw surface to agitate internally the sticky sludges. This offers many benefits not only in the enhancement of thermal efficiency even for the high viscosity material but also greater flexibility in the application of system design and operation. However, one careful precaution was made in operation in that when distributing the hot flue gas over the lump of sludge for internal agitation not to make any pore blocking and to avoid too much pressure drop caused by inertial resistance across the lump of sludge. The optimal retention time for rotating the screw at 1 rpm in order to treat 200 kg/hr of sewage sludge was determined empirically about 100 minutes. The corresponding optimal heat source was found to be 150,000 kcal/hr. A series of numerical calculation is performed to resolve flow characteristics in order to assist in the system design as function of important system and operational variables. The numerical calculation is successfully evaluated against experimental temperature profile and flow field characteristics. In general, the calculation results are physically reasonable and consistent in parametric study. In further studies, more quantitative data analyses such as pressure drop across the type and loading of drying sludge will be made for the system evaluation in experiment and calculation.

• Advances in environmental research
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.39-52
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• 2018

Direct membrane filtration (DMF) of wastewater has many advantages over conventional biological wastewater treatment processes. DMF is not only compact, but potentially energy efficient due to the lack of biological aeration. It also produces more biosolids that can be used to produce methane gas through anaerobic digestion. Most of ammoniacal nitrogen in wastewater is preserved in effluent and is used as fertilizer when effluent is recycled for irrigation. In this study, a technical feasibility of DMF was explored. Organic and nitrogen removal efficiencies were compared between DMF and membrane bioreactor (MBR). Despite the extremely high F/V ratio, e.g., $14.4kg\;COD/m^3/d$, DMF provided very high COD removal efficiencies at ~93%. Soluble microbial products (SMP) and extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) were less in DMF sludge, but membrane fouling rate was far greater than in MBR. The diversity of microbial community in DMF appeared very narrow based on the morphological observation using optical microscope. On the contrary, highly diverse microbial community was observed in the MBR. Microorganisms tended to form jelly globs and attach on reactor wall in DMF. FT-IR study revealed that the biological globs were structurally supported by feather-like materials made of secondary amines. Confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) study showed microorganisms mainly resided on the external surface of microbial globs rather than the internal spaces.