• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.25 no.2_spc
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• pp.1-15
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• 2020

Monitoring and assessing terminal electron accepting processes (TEAPs) are one of the most important steps to remediate contaminated sites via various in-situ techniques. TEAPs are a part of the microbial respiration reactions. Microorganisms gain energy from these reactions and reduces pollutants. Monitoring TEAPs enables us to predict degradability of contaminants and degradation rates. In many countries, TEAPs have been used for characterization of field sites and management of groundwater wells. For instance, US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) provided strategies for groundwater quality and well management by applying TEAPs monitoring. Denmark has also constructed TEAPs map of local unit area to develop effective groundwater managing system, particularly to predict and assess nitrogen contamination. In case of Korea, although detailed soil survey and groundwater contamination assessment have been employed, site investigation guidelines using TEAPs have not been established yet. To better define TEAPs in subsurface environments, multiple indicators including ion concentrations, isotope compositions and contaminant degradation byproducts must be assessed. Furthermore, dissolved hydrogen concentrations are regarded as significant evidence of TEAPs occurring in subsurface environment. This review study introduces optimal sampling techniques of groundwater and dissolved hydrogen, and further discuss how to assess TEAPs in contaminated subsurface environments according to several contamination scenarios.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.36-50
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• 2023

Soil health can deteriorate through both contamination and remediation. Accordingly, revitalization processes are needed to reuse or recycle the remediated soil. The study was conducted to assess the changes in soil health parameters of heavy metals-contaminated soil during soil washing process. In addition, unit processes were proposed to improve the quality of the remediated soil relevant to its reclamation purposes, such as agricultural and forest lands. A total of 21 indicators were used to determine whether the soil health was degraded or recovered. The performance of 6 amendments in improving soil health was quantitatively evaluated according to their dosage and application duration. Finally, the experimental results were assessed by simple regression analyses to determine the statistical significance and relative performance of each amendment. The results indicated that 18 health indicators out of 21 deteriorated through the soil washing process. Based on the results, it is recommended that several effective amendments be complementarily combined and applied in real applications because use of single amendment does not likely improve the quality of remediated soils.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.137-145
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• 2011

Membrane processes are major breakthrough for the removal of organic pollutants in water remediation. The separations of solutes depend on nature of the membranes and solutes. The separation performance depends on the nature of the solutes (i.e., molecular volume, polarity, and hydrophobicity) for the same membrane. As 4-chlorophenol is of more dipolemoment compared to 2-chlorophenol, the orientation of the molecule enables it pass through the pores of the membrane, which is of negatively charged and thus separation order follows: 2-chlorophenol > 4-chlorophenol. Hydrophobicity factor also supports the order. Addition of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) to chlorophenol solution shows remarkable increase in separation performance of the membrane. The improvement in separation is 1.8 and 1.5 times for 4- and 2- chlorophenol consecutively in case of 0.0082 M SDS (1cmc = 0.0082 M) in the solution. 4-chlorophenol has better attachment tendency with SDS because of its relatively more hydrophobic nature and thus reflects in performance i.e. the separation performance of 4-chlorophenol with SDS through the membrane is better compared to 2-chlorophenol.

• Carbon letters
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.192-200
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• 2010

Common reed (Fragmites australis), a local invasive grass, was investigated as a possible feedstock for the production of activated carbon. Dried crushed stems were subjected to impregnation with phosphoric acid (30, 40 and 50%) followed by pyrolysis at $400{\sim}500^{\circ}C$ with final washing and drying. Obtained carbons were characterized by determining: carbon yield, ash content, slurry pH, textural properties and capacity to remove color bodies from factory-grade sugar liquor. Produced carbons possessed surface area up to 700 $m^2/g$, total pore volumes up to 0.37 $cm^3/g$, and proved to be microporous in nature. Decolorization of hot sugar liquor at $80^{\circ}C$ showed degrees of color removal of 60 up to 77% from initial color of 1100~1300 ICU, at a carbon dose of 1.0 g/100 ml liquor. No correlation seems to hold between synthesis conditions and % R but depends on the degree of microporosity. A commercial activated carbon N showed a comparative better color removal capacity of 91%. Common reed proved to be a viable carbon precursor for production of good adsorbing carbon suitable for decolorization in the sugar industry, as well as in other environmental remediation processes.

• Advances in environmental research
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.11-28
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• 2014

Advanced oxidation processes using UV and catalysts like $TiO_2$ and ZnO have been recently applied for the photocatalytic degradation of MTBE in water. Attempts have been made to replace the UV radiation by the solar spectrum. This review intends to shed more light on the work that has been done so far in this area of research. The information provided will help in crystallizing the ideas required to shift the trend from UV photocatalysis to sunlight photocatalysis. The careful optimization of the reaction parameters and the type of the dopant employed are greatly responsible for any enhancement in the degradation process. The advantage of shifting from UV photocatalysts to visible light photocatalysts can be observed when catalysts like $TiO_2$ and ZnO are doped with suitable metals. Therefore, it is expected that in the near future, the visible light photocatalysis will be the main technique applied for the remediation of water contaminated with MTBE.

• Clean Technology
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.201-211
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• 2013

Biochar is charred materials generated during pyrolysis processes in the absence of oxygen using biomass, resulting in high carbon contents. In recent years, biochar has attracted more increasingly due to its potential role in carbon sequestration, renewable energy, waste management, soil amendment for agricultural use, and environmental remediation. Since biochar has a long-term stability in soil for thousands of years, biochar can be carbon negative compared to carbon-neutral biomass energy that decomposes eventually. Moreover, when biochar is applied to soil, crop production can be largely improved due to its high pH and its superior ability to retain water and nutrients. This paper review the research trends of biochar including the principles of carbon sequestration by biochar, its physico-chemical properties, and its applications on agricultural and environmental area.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.61-68
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• 2004

Three kinds of toxic heavy metals, such as lead, copper, and cadmium, existing abundantly in contaminated soils were selected to investigate pH change, electroosmotic flow, and the removal rate in the application of electrokinetic process. In the change of pHs, they reached to about 12 and 2 at each cathodic and anodic region, respectively, and maintained for reaction being proceeded. Electroosmotic flow rates were not influenced by the kind of metal species but by electropotential gradient. On the soils contaminated by each metal, the removal rate of Cd was the fastest among three as in the order of Cd>Pb>Cu. While on the soils contaminated by mixed metal species, Cu was the fastest. Metal species transported by electrokinetic processes were distributed in between 0.9 and 1.0 of normalized region. In the case of soils contaminated by one kind of metal. the relative concentrations of Pb and Cd estimated in between normalized region 0.9 and 1.0 were 5.2 and 5.7, respectively.

• Journal of environmental and Sanitary engineering
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• v.19 no.4 s.54
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• pp.19-24
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• 2004

The objective of this study was to develop a mechanistically based mathematical model that would consider the interdependence of VOCs transport, microbial activity, and sorptive interactions in a moist, unsaturated soil. Because the focus of the model was on description of natural attenuation, the advective VOCs transport that is induced in engineered remediation processes such as vapor extraction was not considered. The utility of the model was assessed through its ability to describe experimental observations from diffusion experiments using toluene as a representative VOCs in well-defined soil columns that contained a toluene degrading bacterium, Pseudomonas putida G7 md Fl, as the sole active microbial species. The gas-liquid mass-transfer was found to be a key parameter controlling the ability of bacteria to degrade VOCs. This finding indicates that soil size and geometry are likely to be important parameters in assessing the possible success of natural attenuation of VOCs in contaminated unsaturated soils. Therefore we found that Pseudomonas putida G7 and Fl were very effective to remove of refractory pollutants such as toluene in soil by Bio-filter

• Proceedings of the KSEEG Conference
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• 2004.12a
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• pp.9-28
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• 2004

Concern about arsenic is increasing throughout the world, including areas of the United States. Elevated levels of arsenic above current drinking-water regulations in ground and surface water can be the result of purely natural phenomena, but often are due to anthropogenic activities, such as mining and agriculture. The current study correlates arsenic speciation in acid mine drainage and mining influenced water with the important water-chemistry properties Eh, pH, and iron(III) concentration. The results show that arsenic speciation is generally in equilibrium with iron chemistry in low pH AMD, which is often not the case in other natural-water matrices. High pH mine waters and groundwater do not 짐ways hold to the redox predictions as well as low pH AMD samples. The oxidation and precipitation of oxyhydroxides depletes iron from some systems, and this also affects arsenite and arsenate concentrations differently through sorption processes.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.926-932
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• 2006

A series of bench-scale membrane filtration experiments were performed to systematically investigate the removal mechanisms of reverse osmosis (RO) and nanofiltration (NF) membranes for BTEX (benzene, toluene, ethylene, xylene), trichloroethylene (TCE) and tetrachloroethylene (PCE). The molecular weight of these organic compounds ranged from 78 to 166 dalton. The rejection of organic compounds by RO/NF membranes varied significantly from 59.6 to 99.2% depending on solute and membrane types. Specifically, experimental results demonstrated that the removal efficiency of RO/NF membranes increased as solute molecular characteristics such as W/L (molecular width/length) ${\times}$ $M_W$ (molecular weight) and octanol-water partition coefficient increased. This observation suggested that the rejection of small organic compounds by RO/NF membranes was determined by the combined effect of physical (molecular size and shape) and chemical (hydrophobicity) properties.