• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.38 no.5
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• pp.407-412
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• 2014

A new apparatus for seawater desalination, based on the principle of gas hydrates, is suggested. The equipment continuously produces and pelletizes gas hydrates by a squeezing operation in a dual cylinder unit, which is able to extract pure hydrate pellets from the seawater-containing reactor. Desalination efficiency for each dissolved ion from seawater samples was tested by inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-AES) and ion chromatography (IC) analysis. This study demonstrates that the suggested method and the stated apparatus may solve the difficulty of separating hydrate crystals from concentrated brine solutions, and therefore may be applied to improve the efficiency of existing desalination processes.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.32 no.8
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• pp.1185-1191
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• 2008

The core design technology for the multi-effect desalination plant using the thermo compressor (MED-TVC) was investigated by the performance test of multi effect desalination plant in this paper. The final G.O.R (gain of output ratio) of MED-TVC type desalination plant is strongly affected by the performance of thermo-vapor compressor. The present experiments for the desalinating capacity and G.O.R were obtained for the range of the motive steam pressure, 266.0, 250.0, 230.0 and 200.0 kPa. And as a practical problem, to investigate the influence of the sea water temperature to the G.O.R, the inlet steam temperature of the suction water vapor was changed in the range of $311.2{\sim}324.2$ K in the present experiment. Through the experiments, the maximum value of G.O.R was 8.5 at the condition of the motive steam pressure, 136.0 kPa and the minimum value of G.O.R was 8.1 at the condition of the motive steam pressure, 266.0 kPa. And it was confirmed that the range of desalination capacity was $355.2{\sim}264.0$ ton/day in the normal operation condition.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.38 no.5
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• pp.255-268
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• 2016

Climate change has increased the need to secure a new water resource in addition to the traditional water resources such as surface water and ground water. The seawater desalination market is growing sharply in accordance with this situation in Korea, "seawater engineering & architecture of high efficiency reverse osmosis (SEAHERO)" program was launched in 2007 to keep pace with world market trend. SEAHERO program was completed in 2014, contributed to turn the domestic technology in evaporative desalination technology to RO desalination technology. Currently, it is investigated that the average specific energy consumption of the whole RO plant is around $3.5kWh/m^3$. The Busan Gi-jang plant has shown $3.7{\sim}4.0kWh/m^3$, including operational electricity for plant and maintenance building. Although not world top level, domestic RO technology is considered to be able to compete in desalination market. Separately, many researchers in the world are developing new technologies for energy savings. Various processes, forward osmosis (FO), membrane distillation (MD) process are expected to compete with RO in the future market. In Korea, FO-RO hybrid process, MD and pressure retarded osmosis (PRO) process are under development through the research program in Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT). The desalination technology level is expected to decrease to $2.5kWh/m^3$.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.403-408
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• 2017

In these days, wastewater reclamation and seawater desalination play essential role in addressing the challenge of worldwide water scarcity. Particularly, reverse osmosis (RO) for seawater desalination process is commonly used due to less energy consumption than conventional thermodynamic systems. However, membrane fouling and electrical energy consumption during operation of RO system for seawater desalination haver continued to be a obstruction to its application. In this study, therefore, wastewater secondary effluent is used for osmotic dilution of seawater. Firstly, fouling behaviour of RO by simulating wastewater effluent in osmotic dilution process was measured and we calculated energy consumption of overall desalination process by theoretical equations and commercial program. Our results reveal that RO membrane fouling can be efficiently controlled by pre-treatment systems such as nano filtration (NF) or forward osmosis (FO) process. Especially FO system for osmotic dilution process is a non-pressurized membrane system and, therefore, the operating energy consumption of overall desalination system was the lowest. Moreover, fouling layer on FO membrane is comparatively weak and reversible enough to be disrupted by physical cleaning. Thus, RO system with low salinity feed water through FO process is possible as a less energy consuming desalination system with efficient membrane fouling control.

• Proceedings of the SAREK Conference
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• 2008.06a
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• pp.3-9
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• 2008

Recently, the plant industries are being activated and plant control systems use various technologies. Because the optimized design for the plants is very important for the reducing of operation and maintenance costs, automatic control systems become more important. Plant control systems consist of the master controller, the plant networks, the programming environment for engineering, monitoring software and the field devices. The control systems should have reliability, availability and safety. Modular architecture of hardware and software makes flexible configuration of the control systems. Each component should have diagnostic functions. It follows industrial standards and makes open systems. Open systems increase accessibility against the data which is distributed in the plants. The controllers including processor and communication modules use the up-to-date technology. They have real time and fault tolerant function by duplicating processors or networks. It also enables to make the distributed control systems. The distributed architecture makes more scalable main control system. Automatic control systems can be operated with better performance. In this paper, we analyzed the requirements of the seawater desalination plants and made some consideration facts for developing the optimized controller. Also we described the design concept of the main controller, which consists of several modules. We should validate and complement the design for the reliability and better performance.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.401-408
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• 2016

Desalination is getting more attention as an alternative to solve a global water shortage problem in the future. Especially, a desalination technology is being expected as a new growth engine of Korea's overseas plant business besides one of the solutions of domestic water shortage problem. In the past, a thermal evaporation technology was a predominant method in desalination market, but more than 75% of the current market is hold by a membrane-based reverse osmosis technology because of its lower energy consumption rate for desalination. In the future, it is expected to have more energy efficient desalination process. Accordingly, various processes are being developed to further enhance the desalination energy efficiency. One of the promising technologies is a desalination process combined with Pressure Retarded Osmosis (PRO) process. The PRO technology is able to generate energy by using osmotic pressure of seawater or desalination brine. And the other benefits are that it has no emission of $CO_2$ and the limited impact of external environmental factors. However, it is not commercialized yet because a high-performance PRO membrane and module, and a PRO system optimization technology is not sufficiently developed. In this paper, the recent research direction and progress of the SWRO-PRO hybrid desalination was discussed regarding a PRO membrane and module, an energy recovery system, pre-treatment and system optimization technologies, and so on.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.30 no.12
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• pp.1197-1202
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• 2008

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2008.07a
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• pp.1699-1700
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• 2008

The dissertation is based on the 'remote monitoring control system' for a water desalination plant which changes seawater into safe clean drinkable water. The system is operated and supported by a satellite link which can be easily handled and monitored by any professional. Therefore the system can be operated from any given location. The design allows it to function on islands that have frequent and severe water shortages via the satellite from the main sector. It shows the specific details for the main provision on building the remote monitoring control system for the water desalination.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.337-342
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• 2008

A population growth and industry advances are increasing the demand for water while improving the quality of life. By turning seawater into freshwater it is an alternative for the water shortage problem. The study analyzes the orders and makes suggestions on the outlook of an enterprise that can supply desalination plants both inside and outside the country. It compares the production capacity of enterprises in the desalination industry who deal with the thermal and RO methods. We compare 7 enterprises in the thermal method which includes Doosan Heavy Industries, and the top 10 enterprises in the RO method which includes General Electric Corp. Now that the markets in the Middle East have opened and markets in other regions are gradually growing, demand for water will grow especially in developing countries that are in the process of industrialization. Also, the market share of thermal method desalination has been falling, gradually, because too much energy is spent during the process. On the other hand, the market share of the RO method will rise from 37% in 2005 to 57% in 2015. Recently, the desalination market shows that changing from thermal method to RO method is the trend in the Middle East. Growth and demand in other regions are growing at the same pace as the Middle East. Due to this trend, if the RO system, which is highly effective and uses less energy, were to be continuously developed it would be possible to supply water using sea water and would be a viable alternative water resource.

• Journal of the Korean Professional Engineers Association
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• v.42 no.6
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• pp.47-52
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• 2009

According to increasing demand of water mainly due to the growth of population and increased water consumption, many countries either face or worry about the shortage of fresh water. Proportionately, importance and efforts of each country to develop the potable water has been gradually increasing as well. Among others, desalination of seawater has been developed to one of the solutions mainly from the middle east and other arid regions to produce large quantity of fresh water from seawater. We installed beach seawater collector wells to develop the filtered seawater supply for desalination in a refinery. We came to a conclusion that the beach seawater collector well is one of the recommendable alternatives of seawater pre-treatment for desalination applications with lower operating cost and higher efficiency.