• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.61 no.2
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• pp.278-286
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• 2023

The present work evaluated the production of biohydrogen under mesophilic and thermophilic conditions through dark fermentation of palm oil mill effluent (POME) in batch mode using the design of experiment methodology. Response surface methodology (RSM) was applied to investigate the influence of the two significant parameters, POME concentration as substrate (5, 12.5, and 20 g/l), and volumetric substrate to inoculum ratio (1:1, 1:1.5, and 1:2, v/v.%), with inoculum concentration of 14.3 g VSS/l. All the experiments were analyzed at 37 ℃ and 55 ℃ at an incubation time of 24 h. The highest chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal, hydrogen content (H₂%), and hydrogen yield (HY) at a substrate concentration of 12.5 g COD/l and S:I ratio of 1:1.5 in mesophilic and thermophilic conditions were obtained (27.3, 24.2%), (57.92, 66.24%), and (6.43, 12.27 ml H₂/g COD_rem), respectively. The results show that thermophilic temperature in terms of COD removal was more effective for higher COD concentrations than for lower concentrations. Optimum parameters projected by RSM with S:I ratio of 1:1.6 and POME concentration of 14.3 g COD/l showed higher results in both temperatures. It is recognized how RSM and optimization processes can predict and affect the process performance under different operational conditions.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.1-23
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• 2012

The coupling of anaerobic biological process and membrane separation could provide excellent suspended solids removal and better biomass retention for wastewater treatment. This coupling improves the biological treatment process while allowing for the recovery of energy through biogas. This review gives a basic description of the anaerobic wastewater treatment process, summarizes the state of the art of anaerobic membrane bioreactors (AnMBRs), and describes the current research trends and needs for the development of AnMBRs. The research interest on AnMBR has grown over the conventional anaerobic processes such as upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB). Studies on AnMBRs have developed different reactor configurations to enhance performances. The AnMBR performances have achieved comparable status to other high rate anaerobic reactors. AnMBR is highly suitable for application with thermophilic anaerobic process to enhance performances. Studies indicate that the applications of AnMBR are not only limited to the high strength industrial wastewater treatment, but also for the municipal wastewater treatment. In recent years, there is a significant progress in the membrane fouling studies, which is a major concern in AnMBR application.

• Journal of the Korea Organic Resources Recycling Association
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.79-89
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• 2001

Anaerobic Digestion - Thermophilic Oxic Process(ADTOP) has been known to be one way reducing and composting of organic wastes without draining or forming excess sludge. It could be completely performed by the evaporation of water using the bio-energy from the microbial degradation of organic. In the present study the complete treatment of Chinese restaurant wastes was conducted and utility of bio-energy produced from the ADTOP was estimated. Base on results, it could be concluded as follows; 1) chinese restaurant wastes could be completely treated using the TOP without draining or excess sludge. Maximum volumetric loading rate was determined as $55.0kg-garbage/m^3$. Input water was almostly evaporated and 90.5% of carboneous organic wastes was conversed to carbondioxide. 2)The optimum volumetric loading rate which is acceptable to maintain over $55^{\circ}C$ in the anaerobic digester was determined as $45kg-garbage/m^3{\cdot}d$. 3) The optimum HRT was at least over 10 days in order to maintain about $50^{\circ}C$ in the anaerobic digester using bio-energy produced from TOP. Therefore the utilization of bio-energy produced from TOP could be used in the process which had long HRT such as the anaerobic digestion. 4) The efficiency of anaerobic digester rate were over 90% by the ADTOP under the organic loading rate of $1.1kg-COD/m^3{\cdot}d$, 50kg-Chinese restaurant garbage and $250{\ell}/m^3{\cdot}min$ of the aeration rate.

• Journal of the Korea Organic Resources Recycling Association
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.29-37
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• 2008

In this work, it was investigated that various aspects of process, application situation, merits and short-coming results of the thermophilic methane fermentation with highly concentrated organic waste substances such as sewage sludges, food wastes and excretions. The merits of this methane fermentation were that it had a very fast reaction rate and was possible to proceed in high loads. It was also high in mortality for pathogenic microorganism and the digested sludge was more hygienic. However, the short-comings were that more energy was required for heating in the fermentation facility, no surplus energy could be gained from low concentration of organic waste, the fermentation treatment dropped level of water quality, thus burdens discharging process of water. Especially, the high concentration of methane fermentation could possibly lack nutritious salt and could face the disturbance by ${NH_4}^+-N$, a proper alternative was required. In general, thermophilic methane fermentation was considered as a better mean in disposing of cow excretion and food waste which were highly concentrated organic wastes. On the other hand, under the condition where the concentration of waste material was low and the high concentrate waste material became higher than 3,000 mg/L in ${NH_4}^+-N$, thermophilic methane fermentation resulted less desirable outcome.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.732-739
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• 2010

Two combined autothermal thermophilic aerobic digestion (ATAD) and biofilter (BF) systems were operated to treat the piggery wastewater and the ammonia offgas. Experimental results indicated that the organic removal efficiency of ATAD-2, operated with oxygen, was higher than that of ATAD-1, operated with air. The concentration of ammonia in ATAD-2 offgas was higher compared to ATAD-1 offgas, but the total amount of ammonia produced from ATAD-2 was less than that from ATAD-1 due to the lower oxygen flowrate. The ammonia gas produced from both ATAD reactors was successfully removed by the BF. The BF-1, connected with ATAD-1, removed 93% of ammonia at the loading rate of $9.4g\;NH_3-N/m^3/hr$. The BF-2, connected with ATAD-2, removed 95% of ammonia gas at the loading rate of $8.1g\;NH_3-N/m^3/hr$. As the nitrification process continued, pH value of recirculating solution continuously decreased due to the accumulation of nitrate. When the ammonia loading rate was less than $22.7g\;NH_3-N/m^3/h$, the proper replacing cycle of recirculating solution was in the range of 10 to 11 days. Almost 90% of total mass of nitrogen fed into the each BF was confirmed from the mass balance on nitrogen.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.378-384
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• 2003

Mesophilically-grown granular sludge seeded in thermophilic UASB reactor was monitored to better understand the start-up process of the reactor. The reactor was fed with a synthetic wastewater containing glucose. As COD loading rate increased stepwise, methane production rate increased. Maximum values of COD removal efficiency (95%) and methane production rate (5.3 l/day) were achieved by approximately day-80 and remained constant afterward. However, physicochemical and microbial properties of granules kept changing even after day-80. Specific methanogenic activity (SMA) was initially negligible, and increased continuously until day-153 and remained constant afterward, showing the maximum value of $1.51{\pm}0.13\;g\;CH_4-COD/g$ VSS/day. Deteriorated settling ability of granules recovered the initial value by day-98 and was maintained afterward, as determined by sludge volume index. Initially reduced granule size increased until day-126, reaching a plateau of 1.1 mm. Combined use of fluorescence in situ hybridization and confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) allowed to localize families of Methanosaetaceae and Merhanosarcinaceae in granules with time Quantitative analyses of CLSM images of granule sections showed abundance patterns of the methanogens and numerical dominance of Methanosaeta spp. throughout the start-up period. The trend of SMA agreed well with abundance patterns of the methanogens.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.247-256
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• 2006

This study has been conducted for the process of food wastes disposal using surplus capacity of established sewage treatment plant by co-digestion of fermented food wastes and sewage sludge after thermophilic acid fermentation of food wastes. The co-digestion of thermophilic acid fermented food wastes and sewage sludge was performed by semi-continous method in mesophilic anaerobic digestion reactor. It showed great digestion efficiency as the average SCOD and VS removal efficiency in organic loading rate 3.30g VS/L.d. were 74.2% and 73.6%, and the gas production rate and average methane content were 0.440 L/g $VS_{add}.d$ and 66.5%, respectively. Based on the results of this study, the co-digestion of thermophilic acid fermented food wastes and sewage sludge in sewage treatment plant is able to improve treatment efficiency of anaerobic digestion reactor and to dispose food wastes simultaneously, and was proved excellent economical efficiency comparing with any other treatment methods.

• Journal of the Korea Organic Resources Recycling Association
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.103-114
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• 1995

Since autoheated thermophilic aerobic digestion (ATAD) process has various advantages for the treatment of high-strength organic wastewater, active research and field application has been applied in U.S.A. and Canada, recently and the interest in ATAD process has been elevated for treating high-strength organic wastewater efficiently in Korea. Therefore, various experiments were carried out to evaluate the feasibility of ATAD process for the treatment of pig manure wastewater. The results of this study showed possibility to reuse pig manure wastewater as wet fodder or liquid compost, since ATAD process led excellent stabilization on the basis of odor and putrefaction. However. digested sludge can not be provided as wet fodder to most of hog farms without changing dry feeder system into wet system and as liquid compost to hog farms not having their own grass land. Since the results showed that the increase of temperature in reactor was resulted not from energy by biological activity. but from mechanical mixing energy. the reactor investigated in this study was against the principle of ATAD process. Therefore. if pig manure wastewater treated by ATAD can not be utilized as wet fodder. it is not economical to adopt ATAD process only for the treatment of wastewater.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.581-586
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• 2017

In this study, in order to find the feasibility of thermophilic biological pre-treatment for the co-digestion of food wastewater and sewage sludge, digestion efficiency of the combined thermophilic aerobic and mesophilic anaerobic process and its effect on methane production were investigated. Also, a lab-scale co-digestion process was operated to observe parameter changes according to the increase of organic loading rates using different dilution ratios of distilled water and food wastewater (1/3 [Run I], 2/3 [Run II] in addition to using the raw food wastewater [Run III]). The results indicated that co-digestion process maintained quite stable and constant pH during entire experiments. With regard to VS removal, the higher removal was observed in the combined process and the removal efficiency was 52.24% (Run I), 66.59% (Run II) and 72.53 (Run III), respectively. In addition, the combined process showed about an 1.6-fold improved methane production rate and significantly higher methane yield than that of using single anaerobic digestion process.

• Mycobiology
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.228-232
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• 2002

This study focused on the production of high quality compost for the growth of aero-thermophilic fungi, which has a promoting effect on the growth rate and production of oyster mushrooms. The automated solid-state bioreactor system was designed on the basis of a Three-Phase-One system, which controls the serial steps of prewetting, pasteurization and fermentation processes. High numbers of thermophilic fungi and bacteria were recovered from the mushroom composts prepared by this solid-state bioreactor. The rates of composting process were depended on physical as well as chemical factors. Among these factors, the parameters of moisture content and temperature were found to be particularly important. In our automated system, constant levels of moisture content, temperature and ventilation via mixing were provided by a centralized control apparatus including PLC, water tank and water jacket systems. These features induced higher microbiological activity of aero-thermophiles.