• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.377-386
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• 2010

Introduction of TBELs into Korean environmental regulatory system for wastewater may require very careful considerations and appropriate modifications of the TBELs applied in US. The Korean regulations for wastewater are based on uniform regulatory criteria for wastewater effluent discharge and are quite different from the individual permit system in US. In addition, the toxic pollutants regulated in Korea are much less than those in US. Therefore, the effects of TBELs application on the pollutants reduction and the economic feasibility should be carefully assessed for different categories of wastewater sources. In this study, the applicability of TBELs for the industrial categories of Korea was discussed. The TBELs were derived for a sample category, the pulp paper paperboard manufacture, based on the previously reported analytical data from 52 facilities of the domestic pulp paper paperboard manufacture in Korea. It was suggested that the BAT effluent limitations were BOD 30 mg/L, $COD_{Mn}$ 40 mg/L, SS 40 mg/L, T-N 30 mg/L and T-P 4 mg/L and that the allowable effluent loads were $0.31{\sim}1.75kgCOD_{Mn}/ton$-products. Due to the limitation of insufficient data, there were difficult to obtain the important factors to derive more systematic and accurate limitation standards for the pollutants such as the 'Long Term Average (LTA)', the 'Product Normalized Discharge Flow (PNDF)', and the 'Variability Factor (VF)'. However, as the first trial of TBELs determination based on the all available analytical data reported, the procedure and the outcome of the study may provide valuable insight on application of TBELs in Korea.