• Magazine of the Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.45 no.6
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• pp.194-206
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• 2003

A pilot study was performed to examine the feasibility of the pond system for further polishing of treatment wetland effluent to agricultural reuse of reclaimed water. The constructed wetland and pond system was installed in Konkuk University and the effluent from septic tank of school building was used as an influent to the wetland system. The effluent of the wetland was used as an influent to pond systems. The influent concentrations of total coliform(TC), fecal coliform (FC), and E. coli were about $10^5$MPN/100 ml, and they were reduced to less than 10,000 MPN/100 ml on average after wetland treatments, showing over 95 % removal. And they were further reduced to less than 1,000 MPN/100 ml in average, showing over 85∼93 % removal after pond treatment. Turbidity and SS were improved effectively on average and their pond effluent concentration was about 4.5 NTU and 9.8 mg/L in average, respectively Average $BOD^5$ concentrations were also reduced substantially to 9.3 mg/L with about 83 % removal rate after wetland and pond treatment systems. Nutrients removal was relatively low and removal rate for T-N and T-P was less than 43 and 44%, respectively after wetland and pond treatment. Considering stable performance and effective removal of bacterial indicators as well as other water quality parameters, low maintenance, and cost-effectiveness, pond system was thought to be an effective and feasible alternative for agricultural reuse of reclaimed water. This paper describes a preliminary result Iron pilot study and further investigations are recommended on the optimum design parameters before full scale application.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.36 no.9
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• pp.648-658
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• 2014

We examined the effects of pollutants into sub-basin on the water quality and loading based on data surveyed during January-December 2013 from 13 sites of 5 streams in the Jinwi watershed. We used the contour plot and Kruskal-Wallis rank sum test to analyze seasonal variation of water quality and loading and Pearson correlation analysis to assess the relationships between pollutants and loadings. The significantly higher seasonal variation were SS, TN and TOC as compared to other water quality constituents (P < 0.001). A significant interaction existed between the effects of human population and the effects of discharge of Sewage Treatment Plant (STP) on water quality and loading, especially for the spring and winter seasons. It is necessary to control discharge water of sewage and wastewater from industrial facilities and to make full use of the watershed management system such as TMDLs in operation since 2012 for improvement in stream water quality.

• Journal of Korean Society of Disaster and Security
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.75-92
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• 2020

In most cases of the water balance analysis, the return flow ratio for each water supply was uniformly determined and applied, so it has been contained a problem that the volume of available water would be incorrectly calculated. Therefore, sewage and wastewater among the return water were focused in this study and the data-driven model was developed to forecast the outflow from the sewage treatment plant. The forecasting results of LSTM (Long Short-Term Memory), GRU (Gated Recurrent Units), and SVR (Support Vector Regression) models, which are mainly used for forecasting the time series data in most fields, were compared with the observed data to determine the optimal model parameters for forecasting outflow. As a result of applying the model, the root mean square error (RMSE) of the GRU model was smaller than those of the LSTM and SVR models, and the Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient (NSE) was higher than those of others. Thus, it was judged that the GRU model could be the optimal model for forecasting the outflow in sewage treatment plants. However, the forecasting outflow tends to be underestimated and overestimated in extreme sections. Therefore, the additional data for extreme events and reducing the minimum time unit of input data were necessary to enhance the accuracy of forecasting. If the water use of the target site was reviewed and the additional parameters that could reflect seasonal effects were considered, more accurate outflow could be forecasted to be ready for climate variability in near future. And it is expected to use as fundamental resources for establishing a reasonable river water management system based on the forecasting results.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.54 no.2
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• pp.248-254
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• 2016

Efficacious wastewater treatment is essential for increasing sewage sludge volume and implementing strict environmental regulations. The operation cost of sludge treatment amounts up to 50% of the total costs for wastewater treatment plants, therefore, an economical sludge destruction method is crucially needed. Amid several destruction methods, wet air oxidation (WAO) can efficiently treat wastewater containing organic pollutants. It can be used not only for sludge destruction but also for useful by-product production. Volatile fatty acids (VFAs), one of many byproducts, is considered to be an important precursor of biofuel and chemical materials. Its high reaction condition has instituted the study of gravity pressure reactor (GPR) for an economical process of WAO to reduce operation cost. Simulation of subcritical condition was conducted using Aspen Plus with predictive Soave-Redlich-Kwong (PSRK) equation of state. Conjointly, simulation analysis for GPR depth, oxidizer type, sludge flow rate and oxidizer injection position was carried out. At GPR depth of 1000m and flow rate of 2 ton/h, the conversion and yield of VFAs were 92.02% and 0.17g/g, respectively.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.16 no.2 s.48
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• pp.145-152
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• 2006

Industry development caused numerical and quantitative increase of noxious chemical substances that contain risk assessment in water resources. For use of efficient water resources a pre-treatment of contaminant source which is flowed in water resources is recognized in essential process. Therefore, the discharged water quality from discharged company began to control contaminant by total amount of pollutant in domestic. However, to estimate closely chemical substances it is not proved up to now, monitoring is very important. This study achieved a monitoring of micro noxious chemical substance by fiber and chemistry industrial wastewater inflow to examine risk assessment of the water system of Nakdong river. Chloroform was measured highest among volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that the results of water quality of influent and effluent are detected from 7 companies of study area. The other side, because measured value of detected chloroform is indefinite detection level in the same company, it is difficulty in management of water quality. However it may not be much effects of the water system of Nakdong river because these company's effluent is high treatment efficiency of chloroform (more than 88%) in sewage treatment plant. On the other hand, in the investigated results for the European Union specified priority substance that is detected to relationship influent and effluent from fiber/chemistry associated industries, these substances were not detected and domestic data was hardly referred. Therefore, data construction of continuous monitoring about this water quality may have to be achieved certainly to utilize as country policy.

• Journal of the Korea Organic Resources Recycling Association
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.151-159
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• 2006

In these days, the importance of sludge treatment is emerging due to the London Convention, so this study was conducted to propose the alternatives for the improved sludge treatment on the organic wastewater and sewage sludge with JAR test and settling column equipped with stirrer. The minimum coagulant dosage to earn the optimum sludge settling efficiency resulted from 200mg/l and each critical sludge settling interface showed no distinct difference when PAC was dosed over 200mg/l. Accordingly, Clarification Rate(CR) with 200mg/l dosage was calculated to CR=(Ho-Ht) / Ho=1-0.4=0.6 because the critical sludge settling height stopped at 0.4. The settling velocity of sludge interface was decreased with the increase of MLSS concentration but rather increased with MLSS concentration over 1,000mg/l. This resulted from positive effect of interacted coagulation for floc formation by transfer to the zone of compressed settling when MLSS concentration increased over 1,000mg/l. The settling velocity of sludge interface showed $28.66{\times}10^{-3}/min$ for average settling velocity of sewage sludge which is 6.7 times higher than $4.25{\times}10^{-3}/min$ for average settling velocity of organic wastewater sludge. The increasing rate of CR for organic wastewater activated sludge was higher than that of settling velocity under 200mg/l of PAC dosage but settling velocity was higher than CR over 200mg/l of PAC dosage. However, in case of sewage sludge, the differential rate of CR was low when PAC dosage was increased but the settling velocity was suddenly increased with over 200mg/l dosage. Therefore coagulation effect was more efficient to MLSS settling velocity rather than SS removal effect in the supernatant.

• Journal of Wetlands Research
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.83-92
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• 2022

The amount of the plastic waste has been increasing according to global demand for plastic. Microplastics are the most hazardous among all plastic pollutants due to their toxicity and unknown physicochemical properties. This study investigates the optimal methodology that can be applied to sewage samples for detecting microplastics before discussing reducing microplastics in MWTPs. In this study, the effect of different pretreatment methods while detecting microplastic analysis of MWTP influent samples was investigated; the samples were collected from the J sewage treatment plant. There are many pretreatment methods but two of them are widely used: Fenton digestion and hydrogen peroxide oxidation. Although there are many pretreatment methods that can be applied to investigate microplastics, the most widely used methods for sewage treatment plant samples are Fenton digestion and H₂O₂ oxidation. For each pretreatment method, there were factors that could cause an error in the measurement. To overcome this, in the case of the Fenton digestion pretreatment, it is recommended to proceed with the analysis by filtration instead of the density separation method. In the case of the H₂O₂ oxidation method, the process of washing with distilled water after the reaction is recommended. As a result of the analysis, the concentration of microplastics was measured to be 2.75ea/L for the sample using the H₂O₂ oxidation method and 3.2ea/L for the sample using the Fenton oxidation method, and most of them were present in the form of fibers. In addition, it is difficult to guarantee the reliability of measurement results from quantitative analysis performed via microscope with eyes. A calibration curve was created for prove the reliability. A total of three calibration curves were drawn, and as a result of analysis of the calibration curves, all R² values were more than 0.9. This ensures high reliability for quantitative analysis. The qualitative analysis could determine the series of microplastics flowing into the MWTP, but could not confirm the chemical composition of each microplastic. This study can be used to confirm the chemical composition of microplastics introduced into MWTP in the future research.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.39 no.5
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• pp.391-407
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• 2013

Micropollutants emerge in surface water through untreated discharge from sewage and wastewater treatment plants (STPs and WWTPs). Most micropollutants resist the conventional systems in place at water treatment plants (WTPs) and survive the production of tap water. In particular, pharmaceuticals and endocrine disruptors (ECDs) are micropollutants frequently detected in drinking water. In this review, we summarized the distribution of micropollutants at WTPs and also scrutinized the effectiveness and mechanisms for their removal at each stage of drinking water production. Micropollutants demonstrated clear concentrations in the final effluents of WTPs. Although chronic exposure to micropollutants in drinking water has unclear adverse effects on humans, peer reviews have argued that continuous accumulation in water environments and inappropriate removal at WTPs has the potential to eventually affect human health. Among the available removal mechanisms for micropollutants at WTPs, coagulation alone is unlikely to eliminate the pollutants, but ionized compounds can be adsorbed to natural particles (e.g. clay and colloidal particles) and metal salts in coagulants. Hydrophobicities of micropollutants are a critical factor in adsorption removal using activated carbon. Disinfection can reduce contaminants through oxidation by disinfectants (e.g. ozone, chlorine and ultraviolet light), but unidentified toxic byproducts may result from such treatments. Overall, the persistence of micropollutants in a treatment system is based on the physico-chemical properties of chemicals and the operating conditions of the processes involved. Therefore, monitoring of WTPs and effective elimination process studies for pharmaceuticals and ECDs are required to control micropollutant contamination of drinking water.

• Journal of the Korea Organic Resources Recycling Association
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.11-20
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• 2016

Depletion of natural resources and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions are an important issue which we have to solve. The recycling of waste has emerged as a global concern. In Korea, the development of cost-effective treatment and recycling technologies also need to be improved. In this study, we compared and analyzed the cost per unit of treatment and recycling of organic waste, and presented an effective recycling scheme. We investigated the current status of treatment and costs for six types of organic wastes from 80 workplaces, including organic wastewater treatment sludge, processed organic sludge, and plant residues. In addition, environmental costs for greenhouse gas reduction were calculated. It's an economic way that organic waste is composted and used as cement additives. In particular, the economic analysis was done by realistic results of the survey target companies. In conclusion, in order for reliable processing and recycling of organic wastes, wastewater treatment sludge and sewage sludge need to be classified based on hazard characteristics. Finally, technical difficulties need to be further resolved such as odors, leachate, and debris on recycling organic wastes.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.491-499
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• 2000

Effluent concentration estimation equations for treatment wetland were reviewed with 3 -year experimental data. Four equations from USEPA, WPCF, Kadlec and Knight, and this study were applied to the over 100 data points of 1996 to 1999 study at the pilot plant in Konkuk University. The system was a subsurface flow type and consisted of 60cm depth of sand and reeds, and it worked continuously including winter with domestic sewage from school building. Generally, all the equations demonstrated reasonable agreement with experimental data and they could be used for design process if selected carefully. Among them, the equation from this study showed the best fit for the data. The reason might be not only the equation was derived from the experimental data, but also it included plant coverage parameter in the equation while others did not Plant coverage was proved to be an important parameter in the prediction of the treatment wetland system, and its inclusion in the estimation equation could improve the accuracy. Although existing equations could be used in the wetland design, pilot plant experiment for the anticipated condition and subsequent equation development can provide more reliable equation. It takes time to obtain meaningful data from wetland system. Therefore, timely onset of well organized study is recommended before large scale application of treatment wetland system to either point or nonpoint source pollution abatement.