• Resources Recycling
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.20-32
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• 2022

This study implemented a chelating agent (Ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid, EDTA) in purification to obtain high-purity vanadium pentoxide (V₂O₅) for use in VRFB (Vanadium Redox Flow Battery). V₂O₅ (powder) was produced through the precipitation recovery of ammonium metavanadate (NH₄VO₃) from a vanadium solution, which was prepared using a low-purity vanadium raw material. The initial purity of the powder was estimated to be 99.7%. However, the use of a chelating agent improved its purity up to 99.9% or higher. It was conjectured that the added chelating agent reacted with the impurity ions to form a complex, stabilizing them. This improved the selectivity for vanadium in the recovery process. However, the prepared V₂O₅ powder exhibited higher contents of K, Mn, Fe, Na, and Al than those in the standard counterparts, thus necessitating additional research on its impurity separation. Furthermore, the vanadium electrolyte was prepared using the high-purity V₂O₅ powder in a newly developed direct electrolytic process. Its analytical properties were compared with those of commercial electrolytes. Owing to the high concentration of the K, Ca, Na, Al, Mg, and Si impurities in the produced vanadium electrolyte, the purity was analyzed to be 99.97%, lower than those (99.98%) of its commercial counterparts. Thus, further research on optimizing the high-purity V₂O₅ powder and electrolyte manufacturing processes may yield a process capable of commercialization.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.55 no.1
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• pp.63-76
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• 2022

Dacitic tuffs, 97 to 118 m thick, were recovered from the lower part of the subsurface Seongdongri Formation, Janggi Basin, which was drilled to assess the potential for underground storage of carbon dioxide. The tuffs are divided into four depositional units(Unit 1 to 4) based on internal structures and particle componentry. Unit 1 and Units 3/4 are ignimbrites that accumulated in subaerial and subaqueous settings, respectively, whereas Unit 2 is braided-stream deposits that accumulated during a volcanic quiescence, and no dacitic tuff is observed. A series of analysis shows that mordenite and clinoptilolite mainly fill the vesicles of glass shards, suggesting their formation by replacement and dissolution of volcanic glass and precipitation from interstitial water during burial and diagenesis. Glass-replaced clinoptilolite has higher Si/Al ratios and Na contents than the vesicle-filling clinoptilolite in Units 3. However, the composition of clinoptilolite becomes identical in Unit 4, irrespective of the occurrence and location. This suggests that the Si/Al ratio and pH in the interstitial water increased with time because of the replacement and leaching of volcanic glass, and that the composition of interstitial water was different between the eastern and western parts of the basin during the formation of the clinoptilolite in Units 1 and 3. It is also inferred that the formation of the two zeolite minerals was sequential according to the depositional units, i.e., the clinoptilolite formed after the growth of mordenite. To summarize, during a volcanic quiescence after the deposition of Unit 1, pH was higher in the western part of the basin because of eastward tilting of the basin floor, and the zeolite ceased to grow because of the closure of the pore space as a result of the growth of smectite. On the other hand, clinoptilolite could grow in the eastern part of the basin in an open system affected by groundwater, where braided stream was developed. Afterwards, Units 3 and 4 were submerged under water because of the basin subsidence, and the alkali content of the interstitial water increased gradually, eventually becoming identical in the eastern and western parts of the basin. This study thus shows that volcanic deposits of similar composition can have variable distribution of zeolite mineral depending on the drainage and depositional environment of basins.

• Korean Journal of Mineralogy and Petrology
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.283-298
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• 2022

In this study, we investigated the mineral geochemistry of the albite-spodumene pegmatite, associated exogreisen, and wall rock from the Boam Li deposit, Wangpiri, Uljin, Gyeongsangbuk-do, South Korea. The paragenesis of the Boam Li deposit consists of two stages; the magmatic and endogreisen stages. In the magmatic stage, pegmatite dikes mainly composed of spodumene, albite, quartz, and K-feldspar intruded into the Janggun limestone formation. In the following endogreisen stage, the secondary fine-grained albite along with muscovite, apatite, beryl, CGM(columbite group mineral), microlite, and cassiterite were precipitated and partly replaced the magmatic stage minerals. Exogreisen composed of tourmaline, quartz, and muscovite develops along the contact between the pegmatite dike and wall rock. The Cs contents of beryl and muscovite and Ta/(Nb+Ta) ratio of CGM are higher in the endogreisen stage than the magmatic stage, suggesting the involvement of the more evolved melts in the greisenization than in the magmatic stage. Florine-rich and Cl-poor apatite infer that the parental magma is likely derived from metasedimentary rock (S-type granite). P₂O₅ contents of albite in the endogreisen stage are below the detection limit of EDS while those of albite in the magmatic stage are 0.28 wt.% on average. The lower P₂O₅ contents of the former albite can be attributed to apatite and microlite precipitation during the endogreisen stage. Calcium introduced from the adjacent Janggun formation may have induced apatite crystallization. The interaction between the pegmatite and Janggun limestone is consistent with the gradual increase in Ca and other divalent cations and decrease in Al from the core to the rim of tourmaline in the exogreisen.

• Ecology and Resilient Infrastructure
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.163-173
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• 2022

Climate change is a key factor that greatly influences changes in the biological seasons and geographical distribution of species. In the ecological field, the BioClimatic predictor (BioClim), which is most related to the physiological characteristics of organisms, is used for vulnerability assessment. However, BioClim values are not provided other than the future period climate average values for each GCM for the Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs) scenario. In this study, BioClim data suitable for domestic conditions was produced using 1 km resolution SSPs scenario detailed data produced by Rural Development Administration, and based on the data, a species distribution model was applied to mainly grow in southern, Gyeongsangbuk-do, Gangwon-do and humid regions. Appropriate habitat distributions were predicted every 30 years for the base years (1981 - 2010) and future years (2011 - 2100) of the Acer pictum subsp. mono. Acer pictum subsp. mono appearance data were collected from a total of 819 points through the national natural environment survey data. In order to improve the performance of the MaxEnt model, the parameters of the model (LQH-1.5) were optimized, and 7 detailed biolicm indices and 5 topographical indices were applied to the MaxEnt model. Drainage, Annual Precipitation (Bio12), and Slope significantly contributed to the distribution of Acer pictum subsp. mono in Korea. As a result of reflecting the growth characteristics that favor moist and fertile soil, the influence of climatic factors was not significant. Accordingly, in the base year, the suitable habitat for a high level of Acer pictum subsp. mono is 3.41% of the area of Korea, and in the near future (2011 - 2040) and far future (2071 - 2100), SSP1-2.6 accounts for 0.01% and 0.02%, gradually decreasing. However, in SSP5-8.5, it was 0.01% and 0.72%, respectively, showing a tendency to decrease in the near future compared to the base year, but to gradually increase toward the far future. This study confirms the future distribution of vegetation that is more easily adapted to climate change, and has significance as a basic study that can be used for future forest restoration of climate change-adapted species.

• Proceedings of the Mineralogical Society of Korea Conference
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• 2001.06a
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• pp.38-39
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• 2001

The seasonal changes in pH, Fe, Al and SO$_4$$\^$2-/ contents of acid drainage released from coal mine dumps play a major role in precipitation of metal hydroxides in the Taebaek coal field area, southeastern Korea. Precipitates in the creeks underwent a cycle of the color change showing white, reddish brown and brownish yellow, which depends on geochemical factors of the creek waters. White precipitates consist of Al-sulfate (basaluminite and hydrobasaluminite) and reddish brown ones are composed of ferrihydrite and brownish yellow ones are of schwertmannite. Goethite coprecipitates with ferrihydrite and schwertmannite. Ferrihydrite formed at higher values than pH 5.3 and schwertmannite precipitated below pH 4.3, and goethite formed at the intermediate pH range between the two minerals. With the pH being increased from acid to intermediate regions, Fe is present both as schwertmannite and goethite. From the present observation, the most favorable pH that basauluminte can precipitate is in the range of pH 4.45-5.95. SEM examination of precipitates at stream bottom shows that they basically consist of agglomerates of spheroid and rod-shape bacteria. Bacteria species are remarkably different among bottom precipitates and, to a less extent, there are slightly different chemical compositions even within the same bacteria. The speciation and calculation of the mineral saturation index were made using MINTEQA2. In waters associated with yellowish brown precipitates mainly composed of schwertmannite, So$_4$ species is mostly free So$_4$$\^$2-/ ion with less AlSo$_4$$\^$+/, CaSo$\sub$(aq)/, and MgSo$\sub$4(aq)/. Ferrous iron is present mostly as free Fe$\^$2+/, and FeSo$\sub$4(aq)/ and ferric iron exists predominantly as Fe(OH)$_2$$\^$+/, with less FeSo$\sub$4(aq)/, Fe(OH)$_2$$\^$-/, FeSo$_4$$\^$-/ and Fe$\^$3+/, respectively Al exists as free Al$\^$3+/, AlOH$_2$$\^$-/, (AlSo$_4$)$\^$+/, and Al(So$_4$)$\^$2-/. Fe is generally saturated with respect to hematite, magnetite, and goethite, with nearly saturation with lepidocrocite. Aluminum and sulfate are supersaturated with respect to predominant alunite and less jubanite, and they approach a saturation state with respect to diaspore, gibbsite, boehmite and gypsum. In the case of waters associated with whitish precipitates mainly composed of basaluminite, Al is present as predominant Al$\^$3+/ and Al(SO$_4$)$\^$+/, with less Al(OH)$\^$2+/, Al(OH)$_2$$\^$+/ and Al(SO$_4$)$\^$2-/. According to calculation for the mineral saturation, aluminum and sulfate are greatly supersaturated with respect to basaluminite and alunite. Diaspore is flirty well supersaturated while jubanite, gibbsite, and boehmite are already supersaturated, and gypsum approaches its saturation state. The observation that the only mineral phase we can easily detect in the whitish precipitate is basaluminite suggests that growth rate of alunite is much slower than that of basaluminite. Neutralization of acid mine drainage due to the dilution caused by the dilution effect due to mixing of unpolluted waters prevails over the buffering effect by the dissolution of carbonate or aluminosilicates. The main factors to affect color change are variations in aqueous geochemistry, which are controlled by dilution effect due to rainfall, water mixng from adjacent creeks, and the extent to which water-rock interaction takes place with seasons. pH, Fe, Al and SO$_4$ contents of the creek water are the most important factors leading to color changes in the precipitates. A geochemical cycle showing color variations in the precipitates provides the potential control on acid mine drainage and can be applied as a reclamation tool in a temperate region with four seasons.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.55 no.6
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• pp.671-687
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• 2022

It has been reported that about 47% of groundwater wells within 10 km from the coastline in the western/southern coastal areas of Korea were affected by seawater. It has been interpreted that the cause of groundwater salinization is seawater intrusion. The Gilsan stream in the Seocheon area was a tidal stream until the Geumgang estuary dam was constructed and operated. Therefore, it is likely that the Gilsan stream catchment was deposited with sediments containing high-saline formation water prior to the use of landfill farmland at this catchment area. The groundwater in this study area showed EC values ranging from 111 to 21,000 µS/cm, and the water quality types were diverse including Ca(or Na)-HCO₃, Ca(or Na)-HCO₃(Cl), Na-Cl(HCO₃), Na-Cl types. It is believed that this diversity of water quality is due to the mixing of seawater and fresh groundwater generated by infiltration of precipitation and surface water through soil and weathered part. In this study, we discussed whether this water quality diversity and the presence of saline groundwater are due to present seawater intrusion or to remnant high-saline pore water in sediments during flushing out process. For this, rain water, surface water, seawater, and groundwater were compared regarding the water quality characteristics, tritium content, oxygen/hydrogen stable isotopic composition, and ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr ratio. The oxygen/hydrogen stable isotopic compositions indicated that water composition of saline groundwaters with large EC values are composed of a mixture of those of fresh groundwater and surface water. Also, the young groundwater estimated by tritium content has generally higher NO₃ content. All these characteristics showed that fresh groundwater and surface water have continued to affect the high-saline groundwater quality in the study area. In addition, considering the deviation pattern in the diagrams of Na/Cl ratio versus Cl content and SAR (sodium adsorption ratio) versus Cl content, in which two end members of fresh surface-ground water and seawater are assumed, it is interpreted that the groundwater in the study area is not experiencing present seawater intrusion, but flush out and retreating from ancient saline formation water.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.55 no.6
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• pp.727-736
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• 2022

Ice wedges are subsurface ice mass structures that formed mainly by freezing precipitation with airborne dust and surrounding soil particles flowed through the active layer into the cracks growing by repeating thermal contractions in the deeper permafrost layer over time. These ice masses characteristically contain high concentrations of solutes and solids. Because of their unique properties and distribution, the possibility of harnessing ice wedges as an alternative archive for reconstructing paleoclimate and paleoenvironment has been recently suggested despite limited studies. It is imperative to preserve the physicochemical properties of the ice wedge (e.g., solute concentration, mineral particles) without any potential alteration to use it as a proxy for reconstructing the paleo-information. Thawing the ice wedge samples is prerequisite for the assessment of their physicochemical properties, during which the paleo-information could be unintentionally altered by any methodological artifact. This study examined the effect of thawing conditions and procedures on the physicochemical properties of solutes and solid particles in ice wedge samples collected from Cyuie, East Siberia. Four different thawing conditions with varying temperatures (4 and 23℃) and oxygen exposures (oxic and anoxic) for the ice wedge sample treatment were examined. Ice wedge samples thawed at 4℃ under anoxic conditions, wherein biological activity and oxidation were kept to a minimum, were set as the standard thawing conditions to which the effects of temperature and oxygen were compared. The results indicate that temperature and oxygen exposure have negligible effects on the physicochemical characteristics of the solid particles. However, the chemical features of the solution (e.g., pH, electric conductivity, alkalinity, and concentration of major cations and trace elements) at 4℃ under oxic conditions were considerably altered, compared to those measured under the standard thawing conditions. This study shows that the thawing condition of ice wedge samples can affect their chemical features and thereby the geochemical information therein for the reconstruction of the paleoclimate and/or paleoenvironment.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.43 no.6
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• pp.691-711
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• 2022

The state-of-the-art Earth system model as a virtual Earth is required for studies of current and future climate change or climate crises. This complex numerical model can account for almost all human activities and natural phenomena affecting the atmosphere of Earth. The Unified Model (UM) from the United Kingdom Meteorological Office (UK Met Office) is among the best Earth system models as a scientific tool for studying the atmosphere. However, owing to the expansive numerical integration cost and substantial output size required to maintain the UM, individual research groups have had to rely only on supercomputers. The limitations of computer resources, especially the computer environment being blocked from outside network connections, reduce the efficiency and effectiveness of conducting research using the model, as well as improving the component codes. Therefore, this study has presented detailed guidance for installing a new version of the UM on high-performance parallel computers (Linux clusters) owned by individual researchers, which would help researchers to easily work with the UM. The numerical integration performance of the UM on Linux clusters was also evaluated for two different model resolutions, namely N96L85 (1.875° ×1.25° with 85 vertical levels up to 85 km) and N48L70 (3.75° ×2.5° with 70 vertical levels up to 80 km). The one-month integration times using 256 cores for the AMIP and CMIP simulations of N96L85 resolution were 169 and 205 min, respectively. The one-month integration time for an N48L70 AMIP run using 252 cores was 33 min. Simulated results on 2-m surface temperature and precipitation intensity were compared with ERA5 re-analysis data. The spatial distributions of the simulated results were qualitatively compared to those of ERA5 in terms of spatial distribution, despite the quantitative differences caused by different resolutions and atmosphere-ocean coupling. In conclusion, this study has confirmed that UM can be successfully installed and used in high-performance Linux clusters.

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.49-62
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• 2023

Solar energy, which is rapidly increasing in proportion, is being continuously developed and invested. As the installation of new and renewable energy policy green new deal and home solar panels increases, the supply of solar energy in Korea is gradually expanding, and research on accurate demand prediction of power generation is actively underway. In addition, the importance of solar radiation prediction was identified in that solar radiation prediction is acting as a factor that most influences power generation demand prediction. In addition, this study can confirm the biggest difference in that it attempted to predict solar radiation using medium-term forecast weather data not used in previous studies. In this paper, we combined the multi-linear regression model, KNN, random fores, and SVR model and the clustering technique, K-means, to predict solar radiation by hour, by calculating the probability density function for each cluster. Before using medium-term forecast data, mean absolute error (MAE) and root mean squared error (RMSE) were used as indicators to compare model prediction results. The data were converted into daily data according to the medium-term forecast data format from March 1, 2017 to February 28, 2022. As a result of comparing the predictive performance of the model, the method showed the best performance by predicting daily solar radiation with random forest, classifying dates with similar climate factors, and calculating the probability density function of solar radiation by cluster. In addition, when the prediction results were checked after fitting the model to the medium-term forecast data using this methodology, it was confirmed that the prediction error increased by date. This seems to be due to a prediction error in the mid-term forecast weather data. In future studies, among the weather factors that can be used in the mid-term forecast data, studies that add exogenous variables such as precipitation or apply time series clustering techniques should be conducted.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.56 no.1
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• pp.55-63
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• 2023

Variations in geochemical and mineralogical properties of the ferromanganese(Fe-Mn) crust reflect environmental changes. In the present study, geochemical and mineralogical analyses, including micro X-ray fluorescence and X-ray diffraction, were utilized to reconstruct the paleo-ocean environment of western Pacific Magellan seamount cluster. Samples of the Fe-Mn crust were collected using an epibenthic sledge from the open seamount XX (151° 51.12' 7.2" E and 16° 8.16' 9.6" N, 1557 meters below sea level) in the Western Pacific Magellan Seamount. According to the structure and phosphating status, the Fe-Mn crust of the OSM-XX can be divided into the following: phosphatizated (L4-L5), massive non-phosphatizated (L3), and porous non-phosphatizated (L1-L2) portions. All ferromanganese layers contain vernadite, and owing to the presence of carbonate fluorapatite (CFA), the phosphatizated portion (L4-L5) is rich in Ca and P. The massive non-phosphatizated section (L3) contains high Mn, Ni, and Co, whereas the porous non-phosphatizated portion (L1-L2), which comprises detrital quartz and feldspar, is rich in Fe. Variations in properties of the Fe-Mn crust from the OSM-XX reflect changes in the nearby marine environment. The formation of this crust started at approximately 51.87 Ma, and precipitation of the CFA during the global phosphatization event that occurred at approximately 36-32 Ma highlights an elevated sea level and low temperature during the associated period. The high Mn, Ni, and Co concentrations and elevated Mn/Fe ratios of samples from the massive phosphatizated portion indicate that the oxygen minimum zone (OMZ) was enhanced, and reducing conditions prevailed during the crust formation. The high Fe and low Mn/Fe ratios in the porous portion indicate a weak OMZ and dominantly oxidizing conditions. These data reflect environmental changes following the end of the Mi-1 glacial period in the Miocene-Oligocene boundary. Subsequently, Mn/Fe and Co/Mn ratios increased slightly in the outermost part of Fe-Mn crust because of the enhanced bottom current and OMZ associated with the continued cooling from approximately 9 Ma. However, the reduced carbonate dissolution rate in the Pacific Ocean from approximately 6 Ma decreased the growth rate of the Fe-Mn crust.