In the membrane process, it is important to improve water treatment efficiency to ensure water quality and minimize membrane fouling. In this study, a pilot study of membrane process using reservoir water was conducted for a long time to secure high flux operation technology capable of responding to influent turbidity changes. The raw water and DAF(Dissolved Air Flotation) treated water were used for influent water of membrane to analyze the effect of water quality on the TMP (Trans Membrane Pressure) and to optimize the membrane operation. When the membrane flux were operated at 70 LMH and 80 LMH under stable water quality conditions with an inlet turbidity of 10 NTU or less, the TMP increase rates were 0.28 and 0.24 kPa/d, respectively, with minor difference. When the membrane with high flux of 80 LMH was operated for a long time under inlet turbidity of 10 NTU or more, the TMP increase rate showed the maximum of 43.5 kPa/d. However, when the CEB(Chemically Enhanced Backwash) cycle was changed from 7 to 1 day, it was confirmed that the TMP increase rate was stable to 0.23 kPa/d. As a result of applying pre-treatment process(DAF) on unstability water quality conditions, it was confirmed that the TMP rise rates differed by 0.17 and 0.64 kPa/d according to the optimization of the coagulant injection. When combined with coagulation pretreatment, it was thought that the balance with the membrane process was more important than the emphasis on efficiency of the pretreatment process. It was considered that stable TMP can be maintained by optimizing the cleaning conditions when the stable or unstable water quality even in the high flux operation on membrane process.
The difficulty of securing freshwater sources is increasing with global climate change. On the other hand, seawater is less affected by climate change and regarded as a stable water source. For utilizing seawater as freshwater, seawater desalination technologies should be employed to reduce the concentration of salts. However, current desalination technologies might accelerate climate change and create problems for the ecosystem. The desalination technologies consume higher energy than conventional water treatment technologies, increase carbon footprint with high electricity use, and discharge high salinity of concentrate to the ocean. Thus, it is critical to developing green desalination technologies for sustainable desalination in the era of climate change. The energy consumption of desalination can be lowered by minimizing pump irreversibility, reducing feed salinity, and harvesting osmotic energy. Also, the carbon footprint can be reduced by employing renewable energy sources to the desalination system. Furthermore, the volume of concentrate discharge can be minimized by recovering valuable minerals from high-salinity concentrate. The future green seawater desalination can be achieved by the advancement of desalination technologies, the employment of renewable energy, and the utilization of concentrate.
To remove phosphorus from the effluent of public wastewater treatment facilities, hundreds of enhanced phosphorus treatment processes have been introduced nationwide. However, these processes have a few problems including excessive maintenance cost and sludge production caused by inappropriate coagulant injection. Therefore, the optimal decision of coagulant dosage and automatic control of coagulant injection are essential. To overcome the drawbacks of conventional phosphorus removal processes, the integrated sedimentation and dissolved air flotation(SeDAF) process has been developed and a demonstration plant(capacity: 100 m3/d) has also been installed. In this study, various jar-tests(sedimentation and / or sedimentation·flotation) and multiple regression analyses have been performed. Particularly, we have highlighted the decision–making algorithms of optimal coagulant dosage to improve the applicability of the SeDAF process. As a result, the sedimentation jar-test could be a simple and reliable method for the decision of appropriate coagulant dosage in field condition of the SeDAF process. And, we have found that the SeDAF process can save 30 – 40% of coagulant dosage compared with conventional sedimentation processes to achieve total phosphorus (T-P) concentration below 0.2 mg/L of treated water, and it can also reduce same portion of sludge production.
Numerous chemical modifications on activated carbon such as acidic conditioning, thermal treatment and metal impregnation have been investigated to enhance adsorption capacities of micropollutants in water treatment plants. In this study, chemical modification including acidic, alkaline treatment, and iron-impregnation was evaluated for adsorption of 2,4-dichlorophenol (2,4-DCP). For Fe-impregnation, three concentrations of ferric chloride solutions, i.e., 0.2 M, 0.4 M, and 0.8 M, were used and ion-exchange (MIX) of iron and subsequent thermal treatment (MTH) were also applied. Surface properties of the modified carbons were analyzed by active surface area, pore volume, three-dimensional images, and chemical characteristics. The acidic and alkaline treatment changed the pore structures but yielded little improvement of adsorption capacities. As Fe concentrations were increased during impregnation, the active adsorption areas were decreased and the compositional ratios of Fe were increased. Adsorption capacities of modified ACs were evaluated using Langmuir isotherm. The MIX modification was not efficient to enhance 2,4-DCP adsorption and the MES treatment showed increases in adsorption capacities of 2,4-DCP, compared to the original activated carbon. These results implied a possibility of chemical impregnation modification for improvement of adsorption of 2,4-DCP, if a proper modification procedure is sought.
Biological phosphorus removal is accomplished by exposing PAO(phosphorus accumulating organisms) to anaerobic-aerobic conversion conditions. In the anaerobic condition, PAO synthesize PHB(polyhydroxybutyrate) and simultaneously hydrolysis of poly-p resulting phosphorus(Pi) release. In aerobic condition, PAO uptake phosphorus(Pi) more than they have released. In this study, cyanobacteria Synechococcus sp., which is known to be able to synthesize PHB like PAO, was exposed to anaerobic-aerobic conversion. If Synechococcus sp. can remove excess phosphorus by the same mechanism as PAO, synergistic effects can occur through photosynthesis. Moreover, Synechococcus sp. is known to be capable of synthesizing PHB using inorganic carbon as well as organic carbon, so even if the available capacity of organic carbon decreases, it was expected to show stable phosphorus removal efficiency. In 6 hours of anaerobic condition, phosphorus release occurred in both inorganic and organic carbon conditions but SPRR(specific phosphorus release rate) of both conditions was 10 mg-P/g-MLSS/day, which was significantly lower than that of PAO. When converting to aerobic conditions, SPUR(specific phosphorus uptake rate) was about 9 mg-P/g-MLSS/day in both conditions, showing a higher uptake rate than the control condition showing SPUR of 6.4 mg-P/g-MLSS/day. But there was no difference in terms of the total amount of removal. According to this study, at least, it seems to be inappropriate to apply Synechococcus sp. to luxury uptake process for phosphorus removal.
Industrial wastewater often contains a number of recalcitrant organic contaminants. These contaminants are hardly degradable by biological wastewater treatment processes, which requires a more powerful treatment method based on chemical oxidation. Advanced oxidation technology (AOT) has been extensively studied for the treatment of nonbiodegradable organics in water and wastewater. Among different AOTs developed up to date, ozonation and the Fenton process are the representative technologies that widely used in the field. Based on the traditional ozonation and the Fenton process, several modified processes have been also developed to accelerate the production of reactive radicals. This article reviews the chemistry of ozonation and the Fenton process as well as the cases of application of these two AOTs to industrial wastewater treatment. In addition, research needs to improve the cost efficiency of ozonation and the Fenton process were discussed.
A 1,000 m3/d DAF(dissolved air flotation) pilot plant was installed to evaluate the performance of the floating process using the Nakdong River. Efficiency of various DAF operations under different conditions, such as hydraulic loading rate, coagulant concentration was evaluated in the current research. The operation conditions were evaluated, based on the removal or turbidity, TOC(total organic carbon), THMFP(trihalomethane formation potential), Mn(manganese), and Al(aluminum). Also, particle size analysis of treated water by DAF was performed to examine the characteristics of particles existing in the treated water. The turbidity removal was higher than 90%, and it could be operated at 0.5 NTU or less, which is suitable for the drinking water quality standard. Turbidity, TOC, and THMFP resulted in stable water quality when replacing the coagulant from alum to PAC(poly aluminum chloride). A 100% removal of Chl-a was recorded during the summer period of the DAF operations. Mn removal was not as effective as where the removal did not satisfy the water quality standards for the majority of the operation period. Hydraulic loading of 10 m/h, and coagulant concentrations of 40 mg/L was determined to be the optimal operating conditions for turbidity and TOC removal. When the coagulant concentration increases, the Al concentration of the DAF treated water also increases, so coagulant injection control is required according to the raw water quality. Particle size distribution results indicated that particles larger than 25 μm showed higher removal rates than smaller particles. The total particel count in the treated water was 2,214.7 counts/ml under the operation conditions of 10 m/h of hydraulic loading rate and coagulant concentrations of 60 mg/L.
High-pressure membrane system like nanofiltration(NF) and reverse osmosis(RO) was investigated as a part of water treatment processes to produce high quality potable water with low organic matter concentration through membrane module tests and design simulation. River water and sand filtration permeate in Busan D water treatment plant were selected as feed water, and NE4040-90 and RE4040-Fen(Toray Chemical Korea) were used as NF and RO membranes, respectively. Total organic carbon(TOC) concentrations of NF and RO permeates were mostly below 0.5 mg/l and the average TOC removal rates of NF and RO membranes were 93.99% and 94.28%, respectively, which means NF used in this study is competitive with RO in terms of organic matter removal ability. Different from ions rejection tendency, the TOC removal rate increases at higher recovery rates, which is because the portion of higher molecular weight materials in the concentrated raw water with increasing recovery rate increases. Discharge of NF/RO concentrates to rivers may not be acceptable because the increased TDS concentration of the concentrates can harm the river eco-system. Thus, the idea of using NF/RO concentrate as the raw water for industrial water production was introduced. The design simulation results with feed water and membranes used in this work reveal that the raw water guideline can be satisfied if the recovery rate of NF/RO system is designed below 80%.
Deep learning models, which imitate the function of human brain, have drawn attention from many engineering fields (mechanical, agricultural, and computer engineering etc). The major advantages of deep learning in engineering fields can be summarized by objects detection, classification, and time-series prediction. As well, it has been applied into environmental science and engineering fields. Here, we compiled our previous attempts to apply deep learning models in water-environment field and presented the future opportunities.
The 37 indicators for performance evaluation of public sewage management agencies are divided into four major categories (agency manpower management ability, wastewater treatment plant operation and management, sludge and water reuse, service quality) in the first stage, and the necessity and score acquisition for the detailed indicators by each major category in the second stages. Priority was investigated through the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) analysis technique for ease and relevance of company efforts. Also, based on the results of this analysis, integrated type weighting and relative importance were analyzed. As a result of the analysis, the weight and relative importance of the first stage classification were in the order of wastewater treatment plant operation and maintenance, operation agency manpower management ability, sludge and water reuse, and service quality. As a result of analyzing the weights and priorities of the detailed performance indicators in the second stage, it was found that operator’s career years, the percentage of certification holding rate in operators, compliance with the effluent water quality standards, training times for operators, and efforts to manage hazardous chemicals were important. Some of the indicators of operation agency performance evaluation may include indicators in which the performance of the company's efforts is underestimated or overestimated. In order to improve this, it is necessary to give weights in consideration of the necessity of the indicator, the relevance of the company's efforts, and the ease of obtaining scores.
Identifying the water circulation status is one of the indispensable processes for watershed management in an urban area. Recently, various water circulation models have been developed to simulate the water circulation, but it takes a lot of time and cost to make a water circulation model that could adapt the characteristics of the watershed. This paper aims to develop a water circulation state estimation model that could easily calculate the status of water circulation in an urban watershed by using multiple linear regression analysis. The study watershed is a watershed in Seoul that applied the impermeable area ratio in 1962 and 2000. And, It was divided into 73 watersheds in order to consider changes in water circulation status according to the urban characteristic factors. The input data of the SHER(Similar Hydrologic Element Response) model, a water circulation model, were used as data for the urban characteristic factors of each watershed. A total of seven factors were considered as urban characteristic factors. Those factors included annual precipitation, watershed area, average land-surface slope, impervious surface ratio, coefficient of saturated permeability, hydraulic gradient of groundwater surface, and length of contact line with downstream block. With significance probabilities (or p-values) of 0.05 and below, all five models showed significant results in estimating the water circulation status such as the surface runoff rate and the evapotranspiration rate. The model that was applied all seven urban characteristics factors, can calculate the most similar results such as the existing water circulation model. The water circulation estimation model developed in this study is not only useful to simply estimate the water circulation status of ungauged watersheds but can also provide data for parameter calibration and validation.