• Korean Journal of Mineralogy and Petrology
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.135-145
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• 2023

Aggregate is used to produce stable materials like concrete and asphalt and is fundamental to meet the social needs of housing, industry, road, energy and health. A total of 42.35 billion tons of aggregate were produced in 2021 worldwide, an increase of 0.91% compared to the previous year. Among them, 2 billion tons were produced in China, India, European Union and United States, making up to 71.75% of the share. South Korea has witnessed a constant increase in aggregate production, overtaking Mexico and Japan for seventh place with 390 million tons and 0.85% of the share. The industrial sand and gravel produced globally amounted to 352.66 million tons. The top seven countries with the highest production were China, United States, Netherlands, Italy, India, Turkey and France, and their production exceeded 10 million tons and held a share of 74.69%. Exports of natural rock recorded $21.68 billion in 2021, increased by $2.3 billion compared to the previous year, while exports of artificial rock increased by $2.66 billion to $13.59 billion. Exports of sand reached $1.71 billion with United States, Netherlands, Germany and Belgium being the four countries with the highest exports of sand. The four countries exported more than $100 million in sand and took up 57.70% of the total amount. Exports of gravel totaled $2.75 billion, with China, Norway, Germany, Belgium, France and Austria in the lead, making up to 48.30% of the total share. The aggregate quarry started to surge in the 1950s due to the change in people's lifestyle such as population growth, urbanization and infrastructure delvelopment. Demand for aggregate is also skyrocketing to prevent land reclamation and flood caused by sea-level rise. Demand for aggregate, which was around 24 gigatons in 2011, is expected to double to 55 gigatons in 2060. However, it is likely that aggregate extraction will heavily damage the ecosystem and the world will eventually face a shortage of aggregate followed by tense social conflict.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.56 no.6
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• pp.781-797
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• 2023

Recently, there has been a rapid response from mineral-demanding countries for securing critical minerals in a high tech industries. Graphite, while overwhelmingly dominated by China in production, is changing in global supply due to the exponential growth in EV battery sector, with active exploration in East Africa. Rare earth elements are essential raw materials widely used in advanced industries. Globally, there are ongoing developments in the production of REEs from three main deposit types: carbonatite, laterite, and ion-adsorption clay types. While China's production has decreased somewhat, it still maintains overwhelming dominance in this sector. Recent changes over the past few years include the rapid emergence of Myanmar and increased production in Vietnam. Nickel has been used in various chemical and metal industries for a long time, but recently, its significance in the market has been increasing, particularly in the battery sector. Worldwide, nickel deposits can be broadly classified into two types: laterite-type, which are derived from ultramafic rocks, and ultramafic hosted sulfide-type. It is predicted that the development of sulfide-type, primarily in Australia, will continue to grow, while the development of laterite-type is expected to be promoted in Indonesia. This is largely driven by the growing demand for nickel in response to the demand for lithium-ion batteries. The global lithium ores are produced in three main types: brine lake (78%), rock/mineral (19%), and clay types (3%). Rock/mineral type has a slightly higher grade compared to brine lake type, but they are less abundant. Chile, Argentina, and the United States primarily produce lithium from brine lake deposits, while Australia and China extract lithium from both brine lake and rock/mineral sources. Canada, on the other hand, exclusively produces lithium from rock/mineral type. Vanadium has traditionally been used in steel alloys, accounting for approximately 90% of its usage. However, there is a growing trend in the use for vanadium redox flow batteries, particularly for large-scale energy storage applications. The global sources of vanadium can be broadly categorized into two main types: vanadium contained in iron ore (81%) produced from mines and vanadium recovered from by-products (secondary sources, 18%). The primary source, accounting for 81%, is vanadium-iron ores, with 70% derived from vanadium slag in the steel making process and 30% from ore mined in primary sources. Intermediate vanadium oxides are manufactured from these sources. Vanadium deposits are classified into four types: vanadiferous titanomagnetite (VTM), sandstone-hosted, shale-hosted, and vanadate types. Currently, only the VTM-type ore is being produced.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.127-133
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• 2013

As an essential part of current industrial society, electric power energy is contantaly increasing in pace with the development of science and technology. In order to meet the demand of electric power, power facilities which take care of the higher voltage and bigger capacity is required. To produce and supply electric power on a sound basis the electric facilities should operate with reliability. To prevent disasters in advance, the high quality facilities should be manufactured, and a constant management should be done. When the power facilities cause accidents, the result is huge national deficits. Since the power facilities play a pivotal role in the key industry of national infrastructures of they should operate for a long time in maintaining a stable state, and the accidents can be prevented in advance. The lifetime of a power cable is considered to be 30 years at the time of manufacture, but in real fields, accidents of cable occur 8-12 years from the start of operation, resulting in a heavy loss of properties. In this paper, we will show that we have found out the cause and process of the deterioration of 22kV cable systems in operation. The result is that the process of deterioration does not follow the Weibull distribution only ; but rather, after the heat deterioration the Weibull distributed deterioration comes, then the cable is destroyed due to the partial discharge resulting from the Weibull distributed deterioration.

• Journal of the Korean Electrochemical Society
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.7-12
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• 2014

There is increasing demand on the reducing the weight and the volume of the major components in lithium secondary battery to improve energy density. Separator not only provides pathway for lithium ion movement but also prevents direct contact between anode and cathode. Herein we fabricated polyethylene separator by varying biaxial stretching ratio to obtain membrane thickness of 16, 12, and $9{\mu}m$. Mechanical and thermal properties of the separator with different thickness were investigated. Also rate capability and charge-discharge cycle property up to 500 cycles were studied using coin type full-cell with $LiCoO_2$ and graphite as a cathode and an anode, respectively. All the cells using separator with different thickness demonstrated excellent capacity retention after 500cycles (around 80%). Considering the rate capability, cell using separator with thickness of $9{\mu}m$ showed best performance. Interestingly, separator thickness of $9{\mu}m$ was more resistant to heat contraction compared to that of $16{\mu}m$ separator.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2010.06a
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• pp.58.1-58.1
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• 2010

In solar cell module manufacturing, single solar cells has to be joined electrically to strings. Copper stripes coated with tin-silver-copper alloy are joined on screen printed silver of solar cells which is called busbar. The bus bar collects the electrons generated in solar cell and it is connected to the next cell in the conventional module manufacturing by a metal stringer using conventional hot air or infrared lamp soldering systems. For thin solar cells, both soldering methods have disadvantages, which heats up the whole cell to high temperatures. Because of the different thermal expansion coefficient, mechanical stresses are induced in the solar cell. Recently, the trend of solar cell is toward thinner thickness below 180um and thus the risk of breakage of solar cells is increasing. This has led to the demand for new joining processes with high productivity and reduced error rates. In our project, we have developed a new method to solder solar cells with a laser heating source. The soldering process using diode laser with wavelength of 980nm was examined. The diode laser used has a maximum power of 60W and a scanner system is used to solder dimension of 6" solar cell and the beam travel speed is optimized. For clamping copper stripe to solar cell, zirconia(ZrO)coated iron pin-spring system is used to clamp both joining parts during a scanner system is traveled. The hot plate temperature that solar cell is positioned during lasersoldering process is optimized. Also, conventional solder joints after $180^{\circ}C$ peel tests are compared to the laser soldering methods. Microstructures in welded zone shows that the diffusion zone between solar cell and metal stripes is better formed than inIR soldering method. It is analyzed that the laser solder joints show no damages to the silicon wafer and no cracks beneath the contact. Peel strength between 4N and 5N are measured, with much shorter joining time than IR solder joints and it is shown that the use of laser soldering reduced the degree of bending of solar cell much less than IR soldering.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.08a
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• pp.269-269
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• 2012

A new ion source has been designed, fabricated, and installed at the NBTS (Neutral Beam Test Stand) at the KAERI (Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute) site. The goalis to provide a 100 keV, 2MW deuterium neutral beam injection as an auxiliary heating of KSTAR (Korea Super Tokamak Advanced Research). To cope with power demand, an ion current of 50 A is required considering the beam power loss and neutralization efficiency. The new ion source consists of a magnetic cusp bucket plasma generator and a set of tetrode accelerators with circular copper apertures. The plasma generator for the new ion source has the same design concept as the modified JAEA multi-cusp plasma generator for the KSTAR prototype ion source. The dimensions of the plasma generator are a cross section of $59{\times}25cm^2$ with a 32.5 cm depth. The anode has azimuthal arrays of Nd-Fe permanent magnets (3.4 kG at surface) in the bucket and an electron dump, which makes 9 cusp lines including the electron dump. The discharge properties were investigated preliminarily to enhance the efficiency of the beam extraction. The discharge of the new ion source was mainly controlled by a constant power mode of operation. The discharge of the plasma generator was initiated by the support of primary electrons emitted from the cathode, consisting of 12 tungsten filaments with a hair-pin type (diameter = 2.0 mm). The arc discharge of the new ion source was achieved easily up to an arc power of 80 kW (80 V/1000 A) with hydrogen gas. The 80 kW capacity seems sufficient for the arc power supply to attain the goal of arc efficiency (beam extracted current/discharge input power = 0.8 A/kW). The accelerator of the new ion source consists of four grids: plasma grid (G1), gradient grid (G2), suppressor grid (G3), and ground grid (G4). Each grid has 280 EA circular apertures. The performance tests of the new ion source accelerator were also finished including accelerator conditioning. A hydrogen ion beam was successfully extracted up to 100 keV /60 A. The optimum perveance is defined where the beam divergence is at a minimum was also investigated experimentally. The optimum hydrogen beam perveance is over $2.3{\mu}P$ at 60 keV, and the beam divergence angle is below $1.0^{\circ}$. Thus, the new ion source is expected to be capable of extracting more than a 5 MW deuterium ion beam power at 100 keV. This ion source can deliver ~2 MW of neutral beam power to KSTAR tokamak plasma for the 2012 campaign.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.1-8
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• 2016

Current sensors are used widely in the fields of current control, monitoring, and measuring. They have become more popular with the increasing demand for smart grids in a power network, generation of renewable energy, electric cars, and hybrid cars. Although open loop Hall effect current sensors have merits, such as low cost, small size, and weight, they have low accuracy. This paper describes the design and fabrication of a 300A open loop current sensor that has high accuracy and temperature performance. The core of the current sensor was calculated numerically and the signal conditioning circuits were designed using circuit analysis software. The characteristics of the manufactured open loop current sensor of 300 A class was measured at currents up to 300 A. According to the test of the current sensor, the accuracy error and linearity error were 0.75% and 0.19%, respectively. When the temperature compensation was carried out with the relevant circuit, the temperature coefficients were less than $0.012%/^{\circ}C$ at temperatures between $-25^{\circ}C$ and $85^{\circ}C$.

• Strategy21
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• s.31
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• pp.142-163
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• 2013

Ieodo is a submerged rock within a Korea's Exclusive Economic Zone(EEZ) in the East China Sea with its most shallow part about 4.6m below the sea level which has no specific rights for the EEZ delimitation. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) stipulates that any coastal state has the rights to claim an EEZ that stretches up to 200 nautical miles from its shore, except where there is an overlap with a neighboring country's claims. Korea claims that Ieodo is within its EEZ as it sits on the Korean side of the equidistant line and the reef is located on the Korea section of the continental shelf. China does not recognize Korea's application of the equidistance principle and insists that Ieodo lies on its continental shelf. According to UNCLOS, Ieodo is located in international waters, rather than one country's EEZ as the two countries have failed to reach a final agreement over the delimitation of the maritime border. This study seeks to understand the evolution of the People's Liberation Army Navy(PLAN) strategy as main obstacles for the EEZ delimitation between Korea and China. PLAN's Strategy evolves from "coastal defense" to "offshore defence", since the late 1980s from a "coastal defence" strategy to an "offshore defence" strategy which would extend the perimeter of defence to between 200 nm and 400 nm from the coast. China's economic power has increased It's dependence on open trade routes for energy supplies and for its own imports and exports. China want secure Sea Lane. PLAN's "offshore defence" strategy combines the concept of active defence with the deployment of its military forces beyond its borders. China's navy try to forward base its units and to achieve an ocean going capability. China's navy expects to have a 'Blue Water' capability by 2050. China insists that coastal states do have a right under UNCLOS to regulate the activities of foreign military forces in their EEZs. China protests several times against US military forces operating within It's EEZ. The U.S. position is that EEZs should be consistent with customary international law of the sea, as reflected in UNCLOS. U.S. has a national interest in the preservation of freedom of navigation as recognized in customary international law of the sea and reflected in UNCLOS. U.S. insists that coastal states under UNCLOS do not have the right to regulate foreign military activities in their EEZs. To be consistent with its demand that the U.S. cease performing military operations in china's EEZ, China would not be able to undertake any military operations in the waters of South Korea's EEZ. As such, to preserve its own security interests, China prefers a status quo policy and used strategic ambiguity on the Ieodo issue. PLAN's strategy of coastal defence has been transformed into offensive defence, Korea's EEZ can be a serious limitation to PLAN's operational plan of activities. Considering China'a view of EEZs, China do not want make EEZ delimitation agreement between Korea and China. China argues that the overlapping areas between EEZs should be handled through negotiations and neither side can take unilateral actions before an agreement is reached. China would prefer Ieodo sea zone as a international waters, rather than one country's EEZ.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.231-248
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• 2014

The role of the foreign direct investment is very crucial for the regional economic growth nowadays. The inward FDI in Korea has been increased since the Act of foreigner investment promotion in 1998. The municipal and national government have designated the special industrial zones and supported the diverse incentives for the foreign investment companies. The service sector had a large share of inward FDI. However, manufacturing sector overtook the service sector as the largest FDI in 2009. This study focuses on the greenfield manufacturing FDI, which was established from 1999 to 2012 in Korea. In order to find out the impacts of low-priced industrial electricity and loose environmental regulations on choosing Korea, this paper did in-depth interviews with MOTIE, Korea industrial complex, Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency, some FDI companies. Investment incentives such as low price of domestic industrial electricity strongly affect why manufacturing FDI companies choose Korea to invest. The Korean government has also acknowledges that low-price policy can internationally compete to attract FDI. There is a possibility that FDI energy-guzzling industrial companies may choose for Korea to use the low-priced electricity, raising the issue of supply-demand of electricity of Korea in the future.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.103-114
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• 2011

Usage of bicycle has been supported the universal reduction of energy consumption and $CO_2$. For the same purpose, new constructions for long length bike roads are planned in Korea. Recently, laboratory tests of physical properties and resistance against environmental loading about optimum mix design of roller compacted concrete, that have advantages of high structural performance by cement hydration and aggregate interlocking, simple construction procedure and low construction cost, are performed for the effective construction of new bike roads. However, properties of roller compacted concrete had different results between laboratory and field tests since it had different compaction method. Also, construction method of roller compacted concrete are not defined for the application of bike roads since it had different demand performance such as thin pavement thickness, low strength and etc with road pavements. Thus, in this experimental research was launched to evaluate the core properties, visual inspection, compaction ratio, water content, thickness reduction rate of roller compaction, skid resistance and roughness by experimental construction about variable mix proportion and compaction method based on laboratory test results. And construction method of roller compacted concrete pavement were suggested for the application of bike roads.