• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.181-193
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• 2018

Nitrous oxide ($N_2O$) is a potent greenhouse gas as well as an ozone-depleting substance. $N_2O$ is emitted during the biological nitrogen removal process in wastewater treatment systems (WTSs), and has significant environmental impacts. In this study, $N_2O$ emission in WTSs was comprehensively reviewed to better understand the effects of key parameters on $N_2O$ emission and obtain useful guidelines for $N_2O$ mitigation strategies in WTSs. Three biological pathways leading to $N_2O$ emission are hydroxylamine oxidation, nitrifier denitrification, and heterotrohic denitrification. Measurements at lab-, pilot- and full-scale WTSs have shown large variations in $N_2O$ emission (0-95% of N-loaded) during wastewater treatment. In the full-scale WTSs (0-14.6% $N_2O$ of N-loaded), the average and median values were 1.95% and 0.2% of N-loaded, respectively. Dissolved oxygen, nitrite concentrations, and chemical oxygen demand (COD)/N ratio are the most important parameters leading to $N_2O$ emission. A variety of operational strategies have been suggested to minimize $N_2O$ emission from WTSs. A new $N_2O$ mitigation strategy involving the introduction of microorganisms with high $N_2O$ reductase activity or oxygenic denitrification ability has been proposed as an alternative canonical denitrification.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.38 no.5
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• pp.228-235
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• 2016

Nitrite accumulation is essential for constructing an anammox process. As the pH in the reactor exerts a complicated and strong influence on the reaction rate, we investigated its effects upon treatment of an ammonic wastewater (2,000 mgN/L) through modeling and experiment. The modeling results indicated that the reaction stability is strongly affected by pH, which results in a severe reduction of the 'stable region' of operation under alkaline environments. On a coordinate of the total ammonia nitrogen (TAN) concentration vs. pH, the maximal stable reaction rates and the maximal nitrite accumulation potentials could be found on the 'stability ridge' that separates the stable region from the unstable region. We achieved a stable and high ammonia oxidation rate (${\sim}6kgN/m^3-d$) with a nitrite accumulation ratio of ~99% when operated near the 'stability ridge'. The optimum pH that can be observed in experiments varies with the TAN concentrations utilized, although the intrinsic optimum pH is fixed. The direction of change is that the optimum operational pH falls as the TAN concentration increases, which is in excellent accordance with the observations in the literature. The optimum operational pH for 95% nitritation was predicted to be ~8.0, whereas it was ~7.2 for 55% partial nitritation to produce an anammox feed in our experimental conditions.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.38 no.7
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• pp.371-376
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• 2016

In this study, the survey of bisphenol-A in indoor water service pipes rehabilitated with epoxy resin was conducted and the risk assessment was done to investigate the effect on the human health to drink tap water. Bisphenol-A in raw water was detected in a range of 50~118 ng/L in all samples, where the limit of quantification was 10 ng/L. This is caused by inflow of the sewage effluent or the tributaries of the surrounding area containing bisphenol-A. Bisphenol-A was not detected in finished water after the advanced water treatment process. It was achieved by its removal from the processes of flocculation-precipitation and oxidation of ozone and chlorine and by being changed to other by-product materials. For the indoor water service pipe, bisphenol-A was not detected in all cases which was not coated with epoxy resin. However, when epoxy resin is lined within the indoor water service pipe, bisphenol-A was identified at maximum level of 521 ng/L and was detected above the limit of quantitation at 68 percentages of all samples. The Hazard Quotient (HQ) at the maximum level (521 ng/L) of the detected bisphenol-A is 0.004, which is less than the reference value of 0.1 for the tap water intake. Therefore, it is considered that the detected levels of bisphenol-A in this study would be safe to drink tap water.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.191-196
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• 2006

The injection of ozone, produced by dielectric barrier discharge, into the exhaust gas gives rise to a rapid oxidation of NO that is the main component of nitrogen oxides($NO_x$) in most practical exhaust gases. Once NO is converted into $NO_2$, it on readily be reduced to $N_2$ in the next step by a reducing agent such as sodium sulfide and sodium sulfite. The reducing agents used ca also remove $SO_2$ effectively, which makes it possible to treat $NO_x\;and\;SO_2$ simultaneously. The present two-step process made up of an ozonizing chamber and an absorber containing a reducing agent solution was able to remove about 95% of the $NO_x$ and 100% of the $SO_2$, initially contained in the simulated exhaust gas. The formation of $H_2S$ from sodium sulfide was prevented by using a strong basic reagent(NaOH) together with the reducing agent. The removal of $NO_x$\;and\;SO_2$ was more effective for $Na_2S$ than $Na_2SO_3$.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.281-288
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• 2011

Recently, researches that a variety of contaminants in water are removed by sonolysis technology with oxidation and pyrolysis process from cavitation were conducted. However, there are few studies for sonochemical treatment by a pilot-scale ultrasound system. This research focused on developing pilot-scale ultrasound systems, which could be an continuously effective treatment for a large volumes of contaminants, and demonstrating the feasibility of utilizing these systems to remove naphthalene from groundwater. V-120 type reactor was found to be 1.4~2.2 times higher effective than the normal type. A total of three different pilot scale's systems consisted of installing effluent and irrigation water in order to be a continuos system, including supplemental additives, and applying a V-120 type reactor and a external cooling cycle system. Naphthalene levels treated by three systems were lower than a recommended guideline of naphthalene for drinking water in EPA. Especially, the naphthalene removal efficiencies of PS1 and PS2 systems were over 97%. The pilot-scale continuous ultrasound clean-up system delivered over 84~95% naphthalene removal efficiency for treatment of 10~20 liter of groundwater. In addition, the ultrasound system could be successfully applied to the conditions of artificial and genuine groundwater contaminated with naphthalene.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.22 no.12
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• pp.2247-2254
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• 2000

This study was carried out to investigate the reaction characteristics of NOx with reagents to grope the power consumption rate reduction and NOx removal rate improvement for the non-thermal plasma denitrification process. The experiments were performed using the real flue gas and wire-plate type plasma reactor. and the flow rate of real flue gas is $20Nm^3/hr$. Paraffinic and olefinic hydrocarbons and ammonia were used as reagents. Olefinic hydrocarbon oxidizes NO more actively than paraffinic hydrocarbon under the non-thermal plasma conditions, resulting in the generation of large amount of $NO_2$ and a very small amount of CO. When the initial NOx concentration increases. oxidation rate of NO decreases and the consumption rate of olefinic hydrocarbon increases significantly. On the other hand. $NH_3$ did not promote reduction reaction with NO under non-thermal plasma conditions. however, there was a tendency that the NHa was effective to remove the $NO_2$ oxidized by olefinic hydrocarbon.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.332-339
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• 2015

Nitrogen removal is one of the most important issues about wastewater treatment because nitrogen is a primary pollutant caused various problems such as eutrophication. We developed a CANON microbial community by using AOB and ANAMMOX bacteria as seeding sources. When 100 mg-N/L of influent ammonium was supplied, the DO above 0.4 mg/L showed a very low TN removal efficiency while the DO of 0.3 mg/L showed TN removal efficiency as high as 71.3%. When the influent ammonium concentration was reduced to 50 mg/L, TN removal efficiency drastically deceased. However, TN removal efficiency was recovered to above 70% after 14 day operation when the influent nitrogen concentration was changed again from 50 mg-N/L to 100 mg-N/L. According to the operating temperature from $37{\pm}1^{\circ}C$ to $20{\pm}1^{\circ}C$, TN removal efficiency also rapidly decreased but gradually increased again up to $70.0{\pm}2.6$%. The analysis of PCR-DGGE showed no substantial difference in microbial community structures under different operational conditions. This suggests that if CANON sludge is once successfully developed from a mixture of AOB and ANAMMOX bacteria, the microbial community can be stably maintained regardless of the changes in operational conditions.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.477-483
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• 2005

Anammox (Anaerobic Ammonium Oxidation) bacteria is recently discovered microorganism which can oxidize ammonium to nitrogen gas in the presence of nitrite under anaerobic conditions. The anammox process can save an energy for nitrification and need not require a carbon source for denitrification, however, the start-up periods takes a long time more than several months due to the long doubling time (approximately 11 days). In order to find the effects of seeding microorganisms, hydrazine, and nitrite concentration on the enhancement of the anammox activity, five kinds of microorganisms were selected. Among the several kinds of seeding microorganisms, the granule from acclimated microorganisms treating high concentration of ammonia nitrogen (A-1) and sludge from piggery wastewater treatment plant (A-2) were found to have a high anammox activity. In the case of A-1, the maximum nitrogen conversion rate represented 0.4 mg N/L-hr, and the amount of nitrite utilization was high compared to those of other seeding microorganisms. The A-4 represented a higher nitrogen conversion rate to 0.7 mg N/L-hr although the ammonium concentration in the serum bottle was high as 200 mg/L. Meanwhile, the anaerobic granule from UASB reactor treating distillery wastewater showed a low anammox activity due to the denitrification by the remained carbon sources in the granule. Hydrazine, intermediate product in anammox reaction, enhanced the anammox activity by representing 1.4 times of nitrogen gas was produced in the test bottle than that of control, when 0.4 mM of $N_2H_4$ was added to serum bottle which contains 5 mM of nitrite. The high concentration of nitrite (10 mM) resulted in the decrease of the anammox activity by showing lower production of nitrogen gas compared to that of 5 mM addition of nitrite concentration. As a result of FISH (Florescence In-Situ Hybridization) experiment, the Amx820 probe showed a more than 13% of anammox bacteria in a granule (A-1).

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.559-569
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• 2007

The purposes of this study were to find the main foulant of membrane and the optimal chemical cleaning method for MF(microfiltration) drinking water treatment system using D dam water as water source. The MF pilot plant which can treat maximum $500m^3/d$ consisted of 3 racks and was operated for 10 months under various operation conditions. After 10 months operation, $1^{st}$ and $2^{nd}$ rack of membrane pilot plant system were cleaned chemically and the degree of the restoration of the fouled membrane in terms of the pure water flux was detemnined. Inorganic compounds which contained in chemical cleaning waste was analyzed by Inductively Coupled Plasma (ICP). One membrane module for 3rd rack was disjointed and membrane fouling materials, especially inorganic compounds were investigated by Electron Probe Microanlysis (EPMA) to elucidate the reason of TMP increase. And also, the various chemical reagents (1N HCl or $H_2SO_4$, oxalic acid as acid and 0.3% NaOCl as alkali) were tested by combination of acid and alkali to determine the optimal chemical cleaning method for the MF system using micro-modules manufactured using the disjointed module. It was verified that the inside and outside of membrane module was colorized with black. As a result of the quantitative and semi-qualitative analysis of membrane foulant by ICP, most of inorganic foulant was manganese which is hard to remove by inorganic acid such as HCI. Especially, it was observed by EPMA that Mn was attached more seriously in inside surface of membrane than in outside surface of that. It was supposed that Mn fouling in inside surface of membrane might be caused by the oxidation of soluble manganese (Mn(II)) to insoluble manganese ($MnO_2$) by chlorine containing in backwashing water. The optimal cleaning method for the removal of manganese fouling was consecutive cleaning with the mixture of 1N HCl and 1% of oxalic acid, 0.3% NaOCl, and 1N HCl showing 91% of the restoration of the fouled membrane.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.159-168
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• 2018

Climate change is believed to increase the amount of dissolved organic matter in surface water, as a result of the release of bulk organic matter, which make difficult to achieve a high quality of drinking water via conventional water treatment techniques. Therefore, the natural water treatment techniques, such as managed aquifer recharge (MAR), can be proposed as a alternative method to improve water quality greatly. Removal of bulk organic matter using managed aquifer recharge system is mainly achieved by biodegradation. Biodegradable dissolved organic carbon (BDOC) and assimilable organic carbon (AOC) can be used as water quality indicators for biological stability of drinking water. In this study, we compared the change of BDOC and AOC with respect to pretreatment methods (i.e., ozone or peroxone). The oxidative pretreatment can transform the recalcitrant organic matter into readily biodegradable one (i.e., BDOC and AOC). We also investigated the differences of organic matter characteristics between BDOC and AOC. We observed the decreases in dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and the tryptophan-like fluorescence intensities. Liquid chromatographic - organic carbon detection (LC-OCD) analysis also showed the reduction of the low molecular weight (LMW) fraction (15% removed, less than 500 Da), which is known to be easily biodegradable, and the biopolymers, high molecular weight fractions (66%). Therefore, BDOC consists of a broad range of organic matter characteristics with respect to molecular weight. In AOC, low molecular weight organic matter and biopolymers fraction was reduced by 11 and 6%, respectively. It confirmed that biodegradation by microorganisms as the main removal mechanism in AOC, while BDOC has biodegradation by microorganism as well as the sorption effects from the sand. $O_3$ and $O_3+H_2O_2$ were compared with respect to biological stability and dissolved organic matter characteristics. BDOC and AOC were determined to be about 1.9 times for $O_3$ and about 1.4 times for $O_3+H_2O_2$. It was confirmed that $O_3$ enhanced the biodegradability by increasing LMW dissolved organic matter.