• Polymer(Korea)
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.265-270
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• 2003

In spite of high ionic conductivity, the polymer gels have poor mechanical properties and high reactivity with lithium metal anode. To solve these problems, the dry solid systems and polymer composites have been intensively studied, due to their good mechanical, thermal, chemical, and electrochemical stability. The objectives of this experiment were to improve ionic conductivity and mechanical properties of the solid polymer electrolytes based on PEO-LiClO$_4$. To obtain higher ionic conductivity and better mechanical properties, ceramic or rubber phase was added in the PEO-LiClO$_4$(8:1) matrix. The results showed that ionic conductivity and mechanical properties were improved. The ionic conductivity of the samples was as high as 10$\^$-5/ S cm$\^$-1/. This value is similar to the best ionic conductivity ever reported in the solid drying system. To obtain better results, we used PEO with various molecular weights (600∼8000) and changed the salt contents. By using DSC, we found that the addition of salt reduced the crystallinity of PEO. The mobility of polymer dependence on salt contents was examined by FT-IR.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.33 no.10
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• pp.709-716
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• 2011

Effect of inorganic coagulants dosing on the performance of electro-chemical process was studied when treating hospital wastewater having low electrolyte concentration. It is thought that adding inorganic coagulants caused increase in concentration of electrolyte and this caused increase in free chloride concentration and consequently, caused increase in indirect oxidation effect. Thus, COD removal efficiencies more than doubled in percentage terms at the 2 hrs of reaction time and current density of $1.76A/dm^2$ compared with the results obtained from the parallel experiments without adding inorganic coagulants. T-N removal efficiencies approximately doubled in percentage terms at the 2 hrs of reaction time and 700 ppm of coagulants addition and applied current density of $1.76A/dm^2$ due to the increase of free residual chlorine such as HOCl caused by increase of electrolyte concentration through the addition of inorganic coagulants. Under the same experimental condition, more than 90% of T-P removal efficiencies was obtained. The reason can be explained that increase of chemical adsorption rate between phosphate and insoluble metal compounds caused by dissolved oxygen generated from anode by the increased electrolyte concentration through inorganic coagulants addition make a major role in improving T-P removal efficiencies. It can be concluded that inorganic coagulants addition as the supplemental agent of electrolyte is effective way in improving organic and nutrient salt removal efficiency when treating hospital wastewater having low electrolyte concentration.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.52 no.3
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• pp.279-288
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• 2014

Nuclear energy is expected to meet the growing energy demand while avoiding CO2 emission. However, the problem of accumulating spent fuel from current nuclear power plants which is mainly composed of uranium oxides should be addressed. One of the most practical solutions is to reduce the spent oxide fuel and recycle it. Next-generation fuel cycles demand innovative features such as a reduction of the environmental load, improved safety, efficient recycling of resources, and feasible economics. Pyroprocessing based on molten salt electrolysis is one of the key technologies for reducing the amount of spent nuclear fuel and destroying toxic waste products, such as the long-life fission products. The oxide reduction process based on the electrochemical reduction in a LiCl-$Li_2O$ electrolyte has been developed for the volume reduction of PWR (Pressurized Water Reactor) spent fuels and for providing metal feeds for the electrorefining process. To speed up the electrochemical reduction process, the influences of the feed form for the cathode and the type of anode shroud on the reduction rate were investigated.

• Journal of the Korean Electrochemical Society
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.101-106
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• 2016

In this study, we prepared an ionic liquid composite solid polymer electrolyte (PEO-LiTFSI-$Pyr_{14}TFSI$) with poly(ethylen oxide), lithium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide, N-butyl-N-methylpyrrolidinium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide by blending-cross linking process. Although the PEO-LiTFSI-$Pyr_{14}TFSI$ composite solid polymer electrolyte displayed a small peak at 4.4 V, it had high electrochemical oxidation stability up to 5.7 V. Ionic conductivity of the PEO-LiTFSI-$Pyr_{14}TFSI$ composite solid polymer electrolyte increased with increasing temperature from $10^{-6}S\;cm^{-1}$ at $30^{\circ}C$ to $10^{-4}S\;cm^{-1}$ at $70^{\circ}C$. To investigate the electrochemical properties, the PEO-LiTFSI-$Pyr_{14}TFSI$ composite solid polymer electrolyte assembled with $LiFePO_4$ cathode and Li-metal anode. At 0.1 C-rate, the cell delivered $40mAh\;g^{-1}$ for $30^{\circ}C$, $69.8mAh\;g^{-1}$ for $40^{\circ}C$ and $113mAh\;g^{-1}$ for $50^{\circ}C$, respectively. The PEO-LiTFSI-$Pyr_{14}TFSI$ solid polymer electrolyte exhibited good charge-discharge performance in Li/SPE/$LiFePO_4$ cells at $50^{\circ}C$.

• Journal of the Korean Electrochemical Society
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.156-160
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• 2015

Experiments using a metal oxide of a non-nuclear material as a fuel are very useful to develop a new electrolytic reducer for pyroprocessing. In this study, the titanium oxides (TiO and $TiO_2$) were selected and investigated as the non-nuclear fuel for the electrolytic reduction. The immersion tests of TiO and $TiO_2$ in a molten 1.0 wt.% $Li_2O$-LiCl salt revealed that they have solubility of 156 and 2100 ppm, respectively. Then, the Ti metals were successfully produced after the separate electrolytic reduction of TiO and $TiO_2$ in a molten 1.0 wt.% $Li_2O$-LiCl salt. However, Ti was detected on the platinum anode used for the electrolytic reduction of $TiO_2$ unlike TiO due to the dissolution of $TiO_2$ into the salt.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.38 no.6
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• pp.291-298
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• 2016

Electrochemical water treatment process as a useful treatment method for the removal of non-degradable matter has been consistently studied for several decades. Key process of electrochemical water treatment are oxidation reaction from an anode and reduction from a cathode. In this study, the effect of pre-treatment methods in the insoluble electrode manufacturing process for the water treatment has been evaluated for the life time of electrode The results of this study showed that pre-treatment methods of a base metal such as surface roughness, clean method and interlayer formation influenced to life time of electrode when the same condition (catalyst electrode layer coating method and material system) was applied for pre-treatment methods. This study was conducted by using $IrO_2/Ti$ electrode In the test of sand-blasting process, an electrode manufactured by using sanding media of different sizes resulted in the most effective electrode life time when the size of alumina was used for $212{\sim}180{\mu}m$ praticle size (#80). The most effective method was considered using arc plasma in the additional roughness control and cleaning process, sputtering method to form Ta type interlayer formation process.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.125-131
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• 2009

An electrolytic system (zinc anode-gallium cathode) was setup to evaluate the performance of several stirrers prepared for this study, where stirrers have been used to prevent uranium from forming dendrite on the cathode in pyrochemical process. In the case of no-stirring condition, zinc dendrites began to grow on the gallium surface in 1 hour and some dendrite grew out of the cathode crucible around 6 hours. When a rectangular stirrer or a tilt stirrer was rotated, at 40${\sim}$150 rpm, to mix the liquid gallium cathode, dendritic growth of zinc metal was prevented irrespective of revolution speed, but some of the deposits overflowed out of the cathode crucible owing to the large centrifugal forces at 150 rpm. The harrow stirrer did not nearly retard the dendrite growth at 40 rpm, but the dendrite growth was retarded at higher than 100 rpm and the zinc deposits also did not overflow at 150 rpm. Pounder could also prevent the dendrite growth to some extent but it had some difficulties in operation compared with other types of stirrers.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.81-91
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• 2022

The use of lithium-ion batteries increases significantly with the rapid spread of electronic devices and electric vehicle and thereby an increase in the amount of waste batteries is expected in the near future. Therefore, studies are continuously being conducted to recover various resources of cathode active material (Ni, Co, Mn, Li) from waste battery. In order to recover the cathode active material, black mass is generally recovered from waste battery. The general process of recovering black mass is a waste battery collection - discharge - dismantling - crushing - classification process. This study focus on the crushing/classification process among the processes. Specifically, the particle size distribution of various samples at each crushing/classification step were evaluated, and the particle shape of each particle fraction was analyzed with a microscope and SEM (Scanning Electron Microscopy)-EDS(Energy Dispersive Spectrometer). As a result, among the black mass particle, fine particle less than 74 ㎛ was the mixture of cathode and anode active material which are properly liberated from the current metals. However, coarse particle larger than 100 ㎛ was present in a form in which the current metal and active material were combined. In addition, this study developed a PBM(Population Balance Model) system that can simulate two-species mixture sample with two different crushing properties. Using developed model, the breakage parameters of two species was derived and predictive performance of breakage distribution was verified.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.02a
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• pp.100-101
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• 2012

The plasma damage free and room temperature processedthin film deposition technology is essential for realization of various next generation organic microelectronic devices such as flexible AMOLED display, flexible OLED lighting, and organic photovoltaic cells because characteristics of fragile organic materials in the plasma process and low glass transition temperatures (Tg) of polymer substrate. In case of directly deposition of metal oxide thin films (including transparent conductive oxide (TCO) and amorphous oxide semiconductor (AOS)) on the organic layers, plasma damages against to the organic materials is fatal. This damage is believed to be originated mainly from high energy energetic particles during the sputtering process such as negative oxygen ions, reflected neutrals by reflection of plasma background gas at the target surface, sputtered atoms, bulk plasma ions, and secondary electrons. To solve this problem, we developed the NBAS (Neutral Beam Assisted Sputtering) process as a plasma damage free and room temperature processed sputtering technology. As a result, electro-optical properties of NBAS processed ITO thin film showed resistivity of $4.0{\times}10^{-4}{\Omega}{\cdot}m$ and high transmittance (>90% at 550 nm) with nano- crystalline structure at room temperature process. Furthermore, in the experiment result of directly deposition of TCO top anode on the inverted structure OLED cell, it is verified that NBAS TCO deposition process does not damages to the underlying organic layers. In case of deposition of transparent conductive oxide (TCO) thin film on the plastic polymer substrate, the room temperature processed sputtering coating of high quality TCO thin film is required. During the sputtering process with higher density plasma, the energetic particles contribute self supplying of activation & crystallization energy without any additional heating and post-annealing and forminga high quality TCO thin film. However, negative oxygen ions which generated from sputteringtarget surface by electron attachment are accelerated to high energy by induced cathode self-bias. Thus the high energy negative oxygen ions can lead to critical physical bombardment damages to forming oxide thin film and this effect does not recover in room temperature process without post thermal annealing. To salve the inherent limitation of plasma sputtering, we have been developed the Magnetic Field Shielded Sputtering (MFSS) process as the high quality oxide thin film deposition process at room temperature. The MFSS process is effectively eliminate or suppress the negative oxygen ions bombardment damage by the plasma limiter which composed permanent magnet array. As a result, electro-optical properties of MFSS processed ITO thin film (resistivity $3.9{\times}10^{-4}{\Omega}{\cdot}cm$, transmittance 95% at 550 nm) have approachedthose of a high temperature DC magnetron sputtering (DMS) ITO thin film were. Also, AOS (a-IGZO) TFTs fabricated by MFSS process without higher temperature post annealing showed very comparable electrical performance with those by DMS process with $400^{\circ}C$ post annealing. They are important to note that the bombardment of a negative oxygen ion which is accelerated by dc self-bias during rf sputtering could degrade the electrical performance of ITO electrodes and a-IGZO TFTs. Finally, we found that reduction of damage from the high energy negative oxygen ions bombardment drives improvement of crystalline structure in the ITO thin film and suppression of the sub-gab states in a-IGZO semiconductor thin film. For realization of organic flexible electronic devices based on plastic substrates, gas barrier coatings are required to prevent the permeation of water and oxygen because organic materials are highly susceptible to water and oxygen. In particular, high efficiency flexible AMOLEDs needs an extremely low water vapor transition rate (WVTR) of $1{\times}10^{-6}gm^{-2}day^{-1}$. The key factor in high quality inorganic gas barrier formation for achieving the very low WVTR required (under ${\sim}10^{-6}gm^{-2}day^{-1}$) is the suppression of nano-sized defect sites and gas diffusion pathways among the grain boundaries. For formation of high quality single inorganic gas barrier layer, we developed high density nano-structured Al2O3 single gas barrier layer usinga NBAS process. The NBAS process can continuously change crystalline structures from an amorphous phase to a nano- crystalline phase with various grain sizes in a single inorganic thin film. As a result, the water vapor transmission rates (WVTR) of the NBAS processed $Al_2O_3$ gas barrier film have improved order of magnitude compared with that of conventional $Al_2O_3$ layers made by the RF magnetron sputteringprocess under the same sputtering conditions; the WVTR of the NBAS processed $Al_2O_3$ gas barrier film was about $5{\times}10^{-6}g/m^2/day$ by just single layer.