• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.191-199
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• 2010

Introduction of Technology-Based Effluent Limitations (TBELs) concepts into Korea requires extensive and through analyses on the expected pollutants reduction effects and the cost factor for the industry side. In addition, the TEBLs should be optimized for the regulatory environments of Korea and be applied in a progressive manner to minimize the undesirable effects. It is also necessary to assess the contribution of each industrial categories's to the pollution of natural water bodies to find the priority of TEBLs application. For these purposes, the pollution loads of various industrial categories were analyzed using risk assessment indicator based on Toxic Weighting Factors (TWFs). First, the TWFs were calculated for the pollutants regulated using the method adopted by USEPA. And the effluent characteristics of the eighty two categories of industry in Korea were investigated. Although the analytical data on the wastewater from different industrial categories are relatively limited, the results from two previous studies were used. The first study, conducted by the National Institute of Environmental Research in 2001~2004, investigated the wastewater characteristics from 255 industrial sources covering the major 20 industrial categories. The second study includes more recent analytical data for the wastewater from 500 industrial sources, covering all the 82 industrial categories. In the result of the pollution loads analyses, the category of 'Synthetic and Chemical manufacture' was found to show the highest raw pollution load. On the other hand the category of 'Ion & Steel manufacture' was found to show the highest effluent pollution loads, which can be considered as the real impacts on natural water streams. The top five categories occupied 62.2% of the total effluent pollution loads. Through the analyses, the relative importances of each industrial categories and the priorities of TEBL-based pollution reduction were determined.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.1-9
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• 2010

Technology-Based Effluent Limitations (TBELs) is a permit limits for a pollutant that is based on the capability of a treatment technology to reduce the pollutant to a certain concentration. Widely practiced for regulations of industrial wastewater in US, TBELs has been accepted as an effective means that can achieve balanced goals between complete elimination of pollutants discharge and economic feasibility for industries. The review of TBELs application in US and the applicability of TBELs to the domestic industry categories was given in three papers. In the first paper, the development and practices of TBELs in US were reviewed including case studies. The developments of TBELs in US in the four major categories, the metal products & machinery, the petroleum refining, the porcelain enameling and the meat & poultry products were reviewed. The applicability of TBELs to the domestic industrial categories was also assessed. In the second paper, the pollution loads analysis for domestic industrial wastewater was conducted based on risk assessment indicator using Toxic Weighting Factors (TWFs). This is an essential part to determine the priority of TBELs application for the domestic industrial categories. In the last paper, the application of TBELs to the domestic industries was demonstrated through a case-study for the pulp/paper/paperboard category. Direct application of TBELs of US into the Korean regulation system may not be desirable because the specific goals and the environment for the regulations for the two countries may not be identical. For example, unlike US, Korea does not adopt the individual permit system for pollution sources. However, among the unproductive and exhaustive controversies over the uniform regulations regardless of the industrial categories in Korea, the introduction of the principles of TBELs are inevitable and more extensive study for applications of TBELs optimized for Korean regulation system will be necessary.