Eutrophication and algal blooms can lead to increase of taste and odor compounds and health problems by cyanobacterial toxins. To cope with these eco-social issues, Ministry of Environment in Korea has been reinforcing the effluent standards of wastewater treatment facilities. As a result, various advanced phosphorus removal processes have been adopted in each wastewater treatment plant nation-widely. However, a lot of existing advanced wastewater treatment processes have been facing the problems of expensive cost in operation and excessive sludge production caused by high dosage of coagulant. In this study, the sedimentation and dissolved air flotation (SeDAF) process integrated with sedimentation and flotation has been developed for enhanced phosphorus removal in wastewater treatment facilities. Design and operating parameters of the SeDAF process with the capacity of 100 m3/d were determined, and a demonstration plant has been installed and operated at I wastewater treatment facility (located in Gyeonggi-do) for the verification of field applicability. Several empirical evaluations for the SeDAF process were performed at demonstration-plant scale, and the results showed clearly that T-P and turbidity values of treated water were to satisfy the highest effluent standards below 0.2 mg/L and 2.0 NTU stably for all of operation cases.

The algal blooms in stagnant streams and lakes have caused many problems. Excessive algae leads to disturbance of ecosystem and overload of water treatment processes. Therefore, phosphorus(P), source of algal blooms, should be controlled. In this study, a filtration trench has been developed to convert dissolved phosphorus into hydroxyapatite(HAP) so that it could be crystallized on the surface of ‘phosphorus removal granular material’; and residual particulate phosphorus could be removed by additional precipitation and filtration. The front and rear parts of filtration trench consisted of ‘phosphorus removal granular material contact bed’ and ‘limestone filtration bed’, respectively. As a result of the column test using phosphorus removal granular material and limestone serially, PO4-P was removed more than 90% when EBCT(empty bed contact time) of the contact bed was over 20 minutes; and T-P represented 60% of removal efficiency when total EBCT was over 1.5 hours. The results of column tests to figure out the sedimentation characteristics showed that more than 90% of particulate phosphorus could be removed within 24 hours. It was necessary to optimize the filtration part in order to increase removal efficiency of T-P additionally. Also, it was confirmed through the simulation of Visual MINTEQ that most of particulate phosphorus in the column tests is the form of HAP. Based on the results of the study, it could be suggested that the design parameters are over 0.5 hour of EBCT for phosphorus removal granular material contact bed and over 1.5 hours of EBCT for limestone filtration bed.

Water quality improvement processes for stagnant area consist mainly of technologies applying vegetation and artificial water circulation, and these existing technologies have some limits to handle pollution loads effectively. To improve the purification efficiency, eco-friendly technologies should be developed that can reinforce self-purification functions. In this study, a multi-functional floating island combined with physical · chemical · biological functions (① flotation and oxidization using microbubbles, ② vegetation purification and ③ bio-filtration with improved adsorption capacity) has been developed and basic experiments were performed to determine the optimal combination conditions for each unit process. It has been shown that it is desirable to operate the microbubble unit process under conditions greater than 3.5 kgf/cm2. In vegetation purification unit process, Yellow Iris (Iris pseudacorus) was suggested to be suitable considering water quality, landscape improvement and maintenance. When granular red-mud was applied to the bio-filtration unit process, it was found that T-P removal efficiency was good and its value was also stable for various linear velocity conditions. The appropriate thickness of filter media was suggested between 30 and 45 cm. In this study, the optimal design and operating parameters of the multi-functional floating island have been presented based on the results of the basic experiments of each unit process.

One of the major sources causing eutrophication and algal blooms of lakes or streams is phosphorus which comes from point and nonpoint pollution sources. HAP (hydroxyapatite) crystallization using granular alkaline materials can achieve the decrease of phosphorus load from wastewater treatment plants and nonpoint pollution control facilities. In order to induce HAP crystal formation, continuous supply of calcium and hydroxyl ions is required. In this research, considering HAP crystallization, several types of lime-based granular alkaline materials were prepared, and the elution characteristics of calcium and hydroxyl ions of each were analyzed. Also, column tests were performed to verify phosphorus removal efficiencies of granular alkaline materials. Material_1 (gypsum+cement mixed material) achieved the highest pH values in the column tests consistently, also, Material_2 (gypsum+slag mixed material) and Material_3 (calcined limestone material) achieved over pH 9.0 for 240 hours (10 days) and proved the efficiencies of long-term ion supplier for HAP crystallization. In the column tests using Material_3, considerable pH increase and phosphorus removal were carried out according to each linear velocity and filtration depth. T-P removal efficiencies were 87.0, 84.0, 68.0% and those of PO4-P 100.0, 97.0, 80.0% for linear velocity of 1.0, 2.5, 5.0 m/hr respectively. Based on the column test results, the applicability of phosphorus removal processes for small-scale wastewater treatment plants and nonpoint pollution control facilities was found out.

In the coagulation/sedimentation (C/S) process of the water treatment process, the inflow of massive algal bloom causes many problems including fouling of filter media. This study was conducted to find out the way to remove the algae’s harmful effects by addition of pre-treatment prior to C/S process. Many Jar-tests were conducted such as ① ACF (Algae Coagulation·Flotation) process using natural algae coagulant (Water Health®), ② ACF + C/S process and ③ C/S process with a variety of conditions using cultured algae. The average values of turbidity were ① 0.42 NTU for ACF process, ② 0.13 NTU for ACF + C/S process and ③ 0.25 NTU for C/S process. It was shown that the treatment efficiency of ACF process could get low turbidity results, and ACF + C/S process could achieve more efficient results than those of C/S process. Any negative effects of ACF process to the efficiency of C/S process were not observed in ACF + C/S process. In order to reduce the unfavorable effects of algae, it was found out that the introduction of ACF process in the forms of ① ACF or ② ACF + C/S could be one of the effective and alternative solutions.