• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
• /
• v.45 no.3
• /
• pp.353-359
• /
• 2012

The identification of effective root zone would clarify dynamics of plant available water and soil water balance. Using the relationship between soil properties and electrical resistivity (ER) the purpose of this research is to identify soil zone affected by a plant root activity using electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) technique. Four plastic containers were prepared for two different soil textures (clay and sandy loam) and one container for each texture was selected for planting four corn seedlings (Zea mays L.) and the others were prepared for the blank. For ERT monitoring, we prepared 0.8 m plastic sticks with 17 electrodes installed with 5 cm space. The Ministing (AGI Inc., Texas) instrument for electrical resistivity measurement and semi-auto converter of electrode arrangement were set up for dipole-dipole array. During 2 months of the corns growing, ERT monitoring was made 3 to 4 days after the irrigation practice. Despite of the same amount water supplied into soils, two textures showed very different apparent resistivity values due to different clay content. The apparent electrical resistivity is consistently lower in clay loam comparing to sandy loam soil implying that plant root does not significantly alter the overall trend of resistivity. When plant root system, however, is active both soils with plants showed 2-7 times higher electrical resistivity and higher coefficient variation than soils without plant, implying the effect of root system on the resistivity, in which may caused by. This result suggests plant root activities regulating the soil water dynamics mainly control the variation of electrical resistivity over soil textural difference. Therefore the identification of water uptake zone would highly be correlated to plant root activities, thus ERT will be feasible approach to identify spatial characteristics of a plant root activity.

• 한국생물공학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 2000.04a
• /
• pp.89-91
• /
• 2000

Polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) compounds are highly carcinogenic chemicals and common groundwater contaminants that are observed to persist in soils. The adherence and slow release of PAHs in soil is an obstacle to remediation and complicates the assessment of cleanup standards and risks. Biological degradation of PAHs in soil has been an area of active research because biological treatment may be less costly than conventional pumping technologies or excavation and thermal treatment. Biological degradation also offers the advantage to transform PAHs into non-toxic products such as biomass and carbon dioxide. Ample evidence exists for aerobic biodegradation of PAHs and many bacteria capable of degrading PAHs have been isolated and characterized. However, the microbial degradation of PAHs in sediments is impaired due to the anaerobic conditions that result from the typically high oxygen demand of the organic material present in the soil, the low solubility of oxygen in water, and the slow mass transfer of oxygen from overlying water to the soil environment. For these reasons, anaerobic microbial degradation technologies could help alleviate sediment PAH contamination and offer significant advantages for cost-efficient in-situ treatment. But very little is known about the potential for anaerobic degradation of PAHs in field soils. The objectives of this research were to assess: (1) the potential for biodegradation of PAH in field aged soils under denitrification conditions, (2) to assess the potential for biodegradation of naphthalene in soil microcosms under denitrifying conditions, and (3) to assess for the existence of microorganisms in field sediments capable of degrading naphthalene via denitrification. Two kinds of soils were used in this research: Harbor Point sediment (HPS-2) and Milwaukee Harbor sediment (MHS). Results presented in this seminar indicate possible degradation of PAHs in soil under denitrifying conditions. During the two months of anaerobic degradation, total PAH removal was modest probably due to both the low availability of the PAHs and competition with other more easily degradable sources of carbon in the sediments. For both Harbor Point sediment (HPS-2) and Milwaukee Harbor sediment (MHS), PAH reduction was confined to 3- and 4-ring PAHs. Comparing PAH reductions during two months of aerobic and anaerobic biotreatment of MHS, it was found that extent of PAHreduction for anaerobic treatment was compatible with that for aerobic treatment. Interestingly, removal of PAHs from sediment particle classes (by size and density) followed similar trends for aerobic and anaerobic treatment of MHS. The majority of the PAHs removed during biotreatment came from the clay/silt fraction. In an earlier study it was shown that PAHs associated with the clay/silt fraction in MHS were more available than PAHs associated with coal-derived fraction. Therefore, although total PAH reductions were small, the removal of PAHs from the more easily available sediment fraction (clay/silt) may result in a significant environmental benefit owing to a reduction in total PAH bioavailability. By using naphthalene as a model PAH compound, biodegradation of naphthalene under denitrifying condition was assessed in microcosms containing MHS. Naphthalene spiked into MHS was degraded below detection limit within 20 days with the accompanying reduction of nitrate. With repeated addition of naphthalene and nitrate, naphthalene degradation under nitrate reducing conditions was stable over one month. Nitrite, one of the intermediates of denitrification was detected during the incubation. Also the denitrification activity of the enrichment culture from MHS slurries was verified by monitoring the production of nitrogen gas in solid fluorescence denitrification medium. Microorganisms capable of degrading naphthalene via denitrification were isolated from this enrichment culture.

• Ecology and Resilient Infrastructure
• /
• v.5 no.1
• /
• pp.19-24
• /
• 2018

Water quality is affected by the pollutants flowing into rivers since the interaction between water bodies and sediments in various environmental conditions. Especially, accumulation of sediments increases in the stagnant water areas due to a relative long hydrological retention time in the water bodies. Therefore, it is an important factor of water quality to understand characterization of the material behavior in water bodies and sediments. In this study, the objective of the conditional experiments was small and medium sized streams located in Gyeonggi-do. To estimate how the changes of fluoride behavior, depending on the pH, ion type, concentration, and clay contents. The pH results showed a trend that adsorption amount of fluorine decreased and the dissolution of fluorine increased following by pH increasing. The concentration and type of ions results showed that $Cl^-$ and $SO{_4}^{2-}$ ions had no significant effect on the adsorption ability of fluorine, the amount of dissolution was increased because $OH^-$ ion had active competition with fluorine in the reaction. The ingredient of sediment results showed that the amounts of fluoride adsorption and dissolution were reduced in samples, which contain relatively large amounts of Silt and Clay components. This means that the environmental conditions of water bodies greatly affect the adsorption and dissolution of fluoride in the sediments, so that proper management of fluoride in the sediments must precede an understanding of the environmental conditions of the water bodies.

• Journal of Wetlands Research
• /
• v.25 no.4
• /
• pp.386-393
• /
• 2023

The domestic marine healing industry is undergoing significant revitalization efforts, with a focus on understanding the efficacy and effectiveness of marine healing resources. This study establishes utilization and management standards through a detailed analysis of the active components within well-recognized marine healing mud materials. Samples of mud materials were collected from domestic tidal flats. These samples exhibited an average composition of 7.87% sand, 74.95% silt, and 17.17% clay, with a combined mud content (silt+clay)(silt+clay) consistently exceeding 90%. Notably, SiO₂ emerged as the most prevalent effective ingredient at 68.4%, followed by Al₂O₃ (13.3%)>Fe₂O₃ (4.0%)>K₂O (2.9%)>Na₂O (2.3%)>MgO (1.6%)>CaO (1.0%)>TiO₂ (0.7%), in terms of average content. Subsequently, through an analysis of effective ingredients, Si, Al, Fe, K, Na, Mg, and Ca were identified as elements demonstrating significant functionality. Among these, key indicator ingredients were selected for quality control, all of which were found to possess efficacious properties. Notably, K, Mg, and Ca exhibited particularly high concentrations. Based on these findings and referencing existing literature, it is recommended that domestic tidal flat mud resources earmarked for utilization as marine healing resources should possess a raw material mud content of no less than 70.0%. Moreover, the cumulative index components K₂O+MgO+CaO should meet or exceed a threshold of 5.0% for optimal effectiveness.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
• /
• v.43 no.4
• /
• pp.564-569
• /
• 2014

This study was conducted to reduce benzo(a)pyrene in sesame oil by addition of several kinds of absorbents (active carbon, diatomaceous earth, kaolin, acid clay, perlite, and silicate). Sesame oil containing 4.1 ppb benzo(a)pyrene was stirred with 0.2% (w/w) several kinds of adsorbents at $40^{\circ}C$ for 30 min. Active carbon resulted in the highest reduction of benzo(a)pyrene in sesame oil among the investigated adsorbents, and decolorization was observed only by using silicate. Reduction of benzo(a)pyrene was optimized by controlling amount the of active carbon, stirring time, and stirring temperature. Futher, 4.1 ppb benzo(a)pyrene in sesame oil was reduced by up to 0.91 ppb by adding 0.5% (w/w) active carbon and stirring for 30 min at $70^{\circ}C$. Optimized conditions were applied to sesame oil (2.14~4.11 ppb) purchased from a Gyeonggi traditional market, and benzo(a)pyrene in sesame oil was reduced by up 0.43~0.86 ppb.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
• /
• v.20 no.1
• /
• pp.21-34
• /
• 2021

In this study, to solve a problem that cannot consider the contribution effect of each layers when the apparent earth pressure in homogeneous ground is applied to multi-layered ground, the measured earth pressures at World were investigated and analyzed. It has been confirmed that the apparent earth pressure in mulit-layered ground is different from single ground and that the extra layer's contribution to the earth pressure cannot be considered. The conventional method of calculating the apparent earth pressure for single ground was extended to mulit-layered ground, and proposed and verified the applicable method for both single and mulit-layered ground. The proposed methods predicted the earth pressure closer to the measurements at the excavation depth of 0.1Z/H or below, and the prediction reliability was evaluated to be better than the conventional method. Among the proposed methods, the method of considering the area ratio of the active failure has a geotechnical validity and predicts the most similar results to the actual earth pressure. To confirm the applicability of the proposed methods, it was presented by comparing and analyzing the results of the proposed methods with the conventional method for the actual case.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
• /
• v.17 no.1
• /
• pp.119-128
• /
• 2008

Laboratory analytical results of 22 sets of hydrophobic adsorbent coils containing surface soil-vapor and two soil samples collected by conventional intrusive method from each boring location at two active dry cleaning facilities in the State of Illinois, U.S.A, were presented to evaluate the performance of soil-vapor survey. The most critical factor to determine the effectiveness of soil-vapor survey is the distance from the soil-vapor sampling device to the actual contamination, which is a function of soil porosity, permeability, primary lithology, and other geological and hydrogeological site-specific parameters. Also this factor can be affected by the history of contaminant-generating operations. The laboratory analytical results in this study showed longer dry cleaning operation history (i.e., 50 years) and presence of fine sand at the beneath Site B allow the contaminants to migrate farther and deeper over a fixed time compared to Site A(i.e., 35 years and silty clay) so that the soil-vapor survey is not likely the most effective environmental site investigation method alone for Site B. However, for Site A, the soil-vapor survey successfully screened the site to identify the location reporting the highest soil concentration of chlorinated solvents.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
• /
• v.15 no.3
• /
• pp.626-632
• /
• 2005

A new bacterium BL-2 excreting a novel cationic polyglucosamine biopolymer was isolated from the spoiled leaves of Chinese cabbage and identified as Enterobacter sp. BL-2. The isolated Enterobacter sp. BL-2 was cultivated in pH-stat fed-batch culture using acetic acid as the feeding stock at pH 8.0, resulting in 17.11 g/l of cells and 1.53 g/l of an extracellular biopolymer after 72 h. The excreted biopolymer was purified by a three-step procedure, involving ethanol precipitation and deproteinizations, to a nearly homogeneous state, and its molecular weight was found to be 106 kDa. It was composed of glucosamine, rhamnose, and galactose at a molar ratio of 86.4:1.6:1.0, respectively, indicating a rarely found novel high-glucosamine-containing biopolymer. The FT-IR and $^{13}C-NMR$ spectra of the novel cationic polyglucosamine biopolymer PGB-l revealed a close identity with chitosan from crab shell. It can effectively flocculate various suspended solids, including kaolin clay, $Ca(OH)_2,\;Al_{2}O_3$, active carbon, microbial cells, and acidic dyes.

• Proceedings of the Polymer Society of Korea Conference
• /
• 2006.10a
• /
• pp.194-194
• /
• 2006

Polymer light-emitting diodes(PLEDs) have great potential application in large area flat panel displays and general lighting so intense academic and industrial research, and impressive scientific and technological progress has been achieved in this field. However, the efficiency and stability of PLEDs till need to be improved in order to fully realize the advantages of low cost and ease of fabrication provided by organic materials. Here, we report our effort to enhance the PLED' s performance in two approaches : 1) Utilizing nano-structured materials such as nano particles, clay, nano porous silica in active layer 2) Modifying the device structure in nano scale to improve not only the device efficiency but also its stability.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
• /
• v.26 no.5
• /
• pp.282-290
• /
• 1982

Several cation exchanged-layer silicate catalysts were prepared from acid clay mainly consisted of montmorillonite, and their catalytic activities for the ethylene polymerization were studied at room temperature. It was found that over$Ni^{2+}$ -Mont, dimerization of ethylene to n-butene proceeded selectively.$Ni^{2+}$ -Mont was activated by evacuation at elevated temperature, giving a maximum temperature, 150$^{\circ}$C . The variations in catalytic activities were closely correlated to the acidity of the catalysts.$Cr^{3+}$ -Mont exhibited a high activity for the polymerization, showing, a maximum at the evacuation temperature of 450$^{\circ}C$. The active site in $Cr^{3+}$-Mont was considered to be $Cr^{3+}$ ion.