• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
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• 2003.04a
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• pp.368-371
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• 2003

Leaking underground storage tanks are a major source of groundwater contamination by petroleum hydrocarbons. Bioremediation of aromatic hydrocarbons in groundwater and sediments is often limited by dissolved oxygen. Aerobic bioremediation has been highly effective in the remediation of many fuel releases, but Many aromatic hydrocarbons degrade very slowly under anaerobic conditions. Nitrate is a good alternative electron acceptor to oxygen and denitrifying bacteria are commonly found in the subsurface and in association with contaminated aquifer materials. Because nitrate is less expensive and more soluble than oxygen. it may be more economical to restore fuel-contaminated aquifers using nitrate rather than oxygen. This study show that biodegradation of BTEX and MTBE is enhanced by the nitrate-amended microcosms under aerobic/anaerobic conditons. Although aromatic hydrocarbons degrade very slowly under anaerobic conditions. Biodegradaton was observed for all of the test compounds.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.317-336
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• 1992

The garden soils, main road dusts, residential road dusts, and playground soils/dusts of Seoul, Geumsan, Onsan, and Taebaek areas were analyzed in order to investigate the level of heavy metal pollution by urbanization and industrialization. The soil pH is in the range of 5.48~8.40 and was generally neutral. The color of soils and dusts is mainly Raw Umber to dark greyish Raw Umber. Some samples from Taebaek city, a coal mining area, showed a deep black color due to contamination by coal dusts. Major minerals of the dusts and soils are quartz, feldspars, and micas, reflecting the composition of the parent rocks. However, pyrite was found as a major mineral in the samples of industrial road dusts of Onsan, a smelting area, and resicential road dusts of Taebaek. Thus, the high level of heavy metals in mining and smelting areas can be explained with the sulfide minerals. The mode of occurences of heavy metals in Seoul, a comprehensive urbanized area, were related to the metallic pollutants and organic materials through observation by scanning eletron microscopy. In main road and residential road dusts of Onsan area, Cd, Zn, and Cu were extremely high. Some industrial road and residential road dusts of Seoul area showed high Cu, Zn, and Pb contents, wereas some garden soils and residential road dusts of Taebaek area were high in As content. In general, the heavy metal contents in dust samples were two to three times higher than those in soil samples. Main road dust samples were the most reflective from the discriminant analysis of multi-element data. Cadmium, Sb, and Se in Onsan area, As in Taebaek area, Pb and Te in Seoul area were most characteristic in discriminating the studied areas. Therefore, Cd in smelting areas, As in coal mining areas, and Pb in metropolitan areas can be suggested as the characteristic elements of each pollution pattern. The dispersion of heavy metal elements in urban areas tends to orignate in main roads and deposit in garden soils through the atmosphere and residential roads. The heavy metal contamination in Seoul is characteristic in areas with high population, factory, road, and traffic decsities. Heavy metal contents are high in the vicinity of smelters in Onsan area and are decayed to background levels from one kilometer away from the smelters.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.13-20
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• 2001

In this Study, application of ${H_2}{O_2}$/$Fe^0 oxidation System (Fenton-like oxidation) for the oxidative treatment of high-level soil contamination with hydrocarbon was suggested. The characteristics of Fenton-like oxidation of diesel-contaminated fine soil was experimentally probed in a batch system varying initial pH, zero valent iron and hydrogen peroxide levels, and initial diesel concentration. Contaminant degradation was identified by total petroleum hydrocarbon(TPH) concentration with gas chromatography. The batch experiments showed that the optimal ${H_2}{O_2}$and $Fe^0 dosage, 10% ${H_2}{O_2}$+ 20% $Fe^0 removed 65% of initial TPH concentration (10,000mg/kg) at a retention time of 24h. And the TPH removal in the ${H_2}{O_2}$/$Fe^0 system effectively proceeded only within a limited pH range of 3-4. The zero valent iron-catalyzed Fenton-like oxidation of diesel-contaminated soil was more competitive to the $FeSO_4-catalyzed system (Fenton oxidation) in removal efficiency and cost especially for the treatment of high level contamination.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.273-278
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• 2013

BACKGROUND: Total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH), which are main materials of soil contamination by oil, are a term used for any mixture of hydrocarbons. Korea Ministry of Environment established the maximum permissible level of TPH in farmland by 500 mg/kg, and reported that the TPH level of soil in 266 installation such as gas station, transport company, and military unit ranged from 1,356 to 55,117 mg/kg and were much higher than the maximum permissible level in 2011. METHODS AND RESULTS: To determine the effect of TPH on crops, we investigated the effect of gasoline, kerosene, and diesel on the germination and radicle growth of mainly consumed crops. The germination rates of control in investigated all crops ranged from 80.0-100%. The germination and radicle growth in majority of investigated crops were not inhibited even at 2,500 mg/L. However, germination in onion, leek, and green perilla and radicle growth in leek, rape, tomato, and green perilla were significantly inhibited by increasing concentrations of gasoline, kerosene and diesel treatment. Germination and radicle growth inhibition of green perilla by kerosene and diesel were the highest, the percent inhibition at the 500 mg/L were 100 and 98.6%, 100 and 88.2%, respectively. 50% inhibition of germination in green perilla by kerosene and diesel were 39.96 and 29.87 mg/L, and 50% inhibition of radicle growth were 52.76 and 177.96 mg/L, respectively. Conclusion(s): These results suggest the possibility that the maximum permissible level of TPH might to be established general level with exception by crops.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.29 no.8
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• pp.938-943
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• 2007

Anaerobic degradation of petroleum hydrocarbons in a soil artificially contaminated with 10,000 mg/kg soil of diesel fuel was tested by adding an anaerobic sludge taken from a sludge digestion tank. Treatments of soil(50 g) with 15 mL/kg soil and 30 mL/kg soil of the digestion sludge(2,000 mg/L of vss(volatile suspended solids)) showed 37.2% and 58.0% of total petroleum hydrocarbons(TPH) removal during 90 days incubation, respectively. In evaluation of several anaerobic conditions including nitrate reducing, sulfate reducing, methanogenic, and mixed electron accepters condition, treatments with the digested sludge showed significant degradation of diesel fuel under all anaerobic conditions compare to a control treatment of soil without the sludge and a treatment of autoclaved soil treatment with autoclaved digestion sludge. The rate of diesel fuel degradation was the highest in the treatment with the sludge and mixed electron accepters (75% removal of TPH) for 120 days incubation followed in order by sulfate reducing, nitrate reducing, methanogenic condition as 67%, 53%, 43%, respectively. However, the removal rate of non-biodegradable isoprenoid was the highest in the sulfate reducing condition. These results suggest that anaerobic degradation of diesel fuel in soil with digested sludge is effective for practical remediation of soil contaminated with petroleum hydrocarbons.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.28-34
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• 2014

Automatic transmission fluid (ATF) is used for automatic transmissions in the vehicle as the characterized fluid. Recently, the vehicle manufacture usually guarantee for fluid change over 80000~100000 km mileage or no exchange, but most drivers usually change ATF below every 50000 km driving in Republic of Korea. It can cause to raise environmental contamination by used ATF and increase the cost of driving by frequently ATF change. In this study, we investigate the various physical properties such as flash point, fire point, pour point, kinematic viscosity, cold cranking simulator, total acid number, and metal component concentration for fresh and used ATF after driving (50000 km, 100000 km). The result showed that the total acid number, pour point, Fe, Al and Cu component had increased than fresh ATF, but 2 kind of used oil (50000 km and 100000km) had similar physical values and metal component concentration.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.62-70
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• 2009

A field soil highly contaminated with petroleum hydrocarbons (JP-8 and diesel fuels) was employed for its remediation by a lab-scale thermal desorption process. The soil was collected in the vicinity of an underground storage tank in a closed military base and its contamination level was as high as 4,476 ppm as total petroleum hydrocarbon (TPH). A lab scale directly-heated low temperature thermal desorption (LTTD) system of 10-L capacity was developed and operated for the thermal treatment of TPH contaminated soils in this study. The desired operation temperature was found to be approximately $200-300^{\circ}C$ from the thermal gravimetric analysis of the contaminated field soils. The removal efficiencies higher than 90% were achieved by the LTTD treatment at $200^{\circ}C$ for 10 min as well as at $300^{\circ}C$ for 5 min. As the water content in the soils increased and therefore they were likely to be present as lumps, the removal efficiency noticeably decreased, indicating that a pre-treatment such as field drying should be required. The analysis of physical and chemical properties of soils before and after the LTTD treatment demonstrated that no significant changes occurred during the thermal treatment, supporting no needs for additional post-treatments for the soils treated by LTTD. The results presented in this study are expected to provide useful information for the field application and verification of LTTD for the highly contaminated geo-environment.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.12 no.8
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• pp.283-288
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• 2014

The underground water quality of petroleum products storage cavern is influenced by that of dumping and landfill sites adjacent to cavern. From the chemical analysis of underground water sampled from landfill site, insignificant amounts of As, Cu and Pb were detected in a half of test samples while Cd, Hg, $Cr^{6+}$, $CN^-$, TCE, PCE and Phenol were not detected in all samples. All measurements of $COD^{Mn}$ were below $8.0mg/{\ell}$ that can be negligible for the contamination by organic matters. The total bacteria counted from 1st and 2nd microbiological analysis were $94.84{\times}10^4cells/m{\ell}$ and $146.26{\times}10^{-4}cells/m{\ell}$, respectively, and all counts of the sulfate reducing bacteria were less than $2cells/m{\ell}$. It can be suggested that the water quality adjacent to storage cavern can also be studied to improve the reliability of hydrogeologic stability of storage cavern.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.227-233
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• 2010

This study examined microbial community structures (MCSs) according to environmental factors through DGGE analysis and comparison in various soils collected from near army bases and gas stations. As a result, the similarities based on DGGE band profiles showed the closer relationship in regional properties than in pollution characteristics, probably due to the degree of weak contamination. The highly contaminated samples with oil revealed low MCS similarities with others in the same region and very low with all the other samples in the other regions. Thus the microbial community structure would more be affected by region-based natural factors than by contamination factors in case of minor pollution. All the dominant culturable bacterial species were involved in firmicutes or high GC Gram+ in a major portion of soil samples and the highly oil-contaminated samples contained Arthrobacter, Bacillus, Methylobacterium, Clavibacter, Streptomyces and Nocardia as reported genera, and Leifsonia as a unreported genus.

• Journal of Korea Soil Environment Society
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.53-60
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• 1998

The influence of venting on the leaching characteristics of pure gasoline and gasoline contaminated soil was studied. The change of leaching characteristics by venting of contaminated soil column could be characterized by two distinct trends : 1) the leaching concentration in TPH-GRO rapidly decreased with evaporation until the evaporation loss became 75% of the original volume. Afterwards, it gradually decreased. 2) the leaching concentrations of individual components showed initial increase followed by gradual decrease. In general, the relative increase of leaching concentration and the venting time to reach the maximum increased with the molecular weight of the components. It should be noted that the decrease of gasoline concentration in the vented air occurs faster than that in the leaching solution. This indicates that, after removing most of the gasoline by evaporation, the focus of the risk assessment for the residual contaminants should be on the groundwater contamination rather than air pollution.