Two sewage treatment facilities were selected to identify odor emission characteristics, focusing on volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and sulfur compounds. The complex odor, 5 kinds of sulfur compounds and 23 kinds of VOCs were analyzed from gas and sludge storages. Hydrogen sulfide was detected in the highest concentration and had the highest odor quotient among the odorous compounds monitored in this study, demonstrating that the contribution of hydrogen sulfide to the complex odor reached up to 90%. For VOCs, the overall contribution to the complex odor was not critical but VOCs can sufficiently trigger an odorous sensation because the sum of the odor quotient reached up to 2.89.

As the Enforcement Ordinance of Environmental Policy Act was revised in 2013, total organic carbon(TOC) was added as an indicative parameter for organic matter in Water and Aquatic Ecosystem Environmental Criteria. Under these imminent circumstances, a regulatory standard is needed to achieve the proposed TOC limitation control water quality from the public sewage treatment plants(PSTWs). This study purposes to present the determination method for TOC effluent limitation at the PSTWs. Therefore we investigate the TOC effluent limitation of foreign countries such as EU, Germany and USA, and analyse the effluent water qualities of PSTWs. In using these TOC data, we review apprehensively the statistics-based, the technology-based, and the region(water quality)-based determination method of TOC effluent limitation for PSTWs.

In this study, a newly developed agitator with hydrofoil impeller applied to actual biological process in advanced wastewater treatment plant was evaluated. Several series of experiments were conducted in two different wastewater treatment plants where actual problems have been occurred such as the production of scums and sludge settling. For more effective evaluation, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and measurements of MLSS (Mixed Liquor Suspended Solids) and DO (Dissolved Oxygen) were used with other measuring equipments. After the installation of one unit of vertical hydrofoil agitator in plant A, scum and sludge settling problems were solved and more than seventy percent of operational energy was saved. In case of plant B, there were three cells of each anoxic and anaerobic tanks, and each cell had one unit of submersible horizontal agitator. After the integration of three cells to one cell in each tank, and installation of one vertical hydrofoil agitator per tank, all the problems caused by improper mixing were solved and more than eighty percent of operational energy was found to be saved. Simple change of agitator applied to biological process in wastewater treatment plant was proved to be essential to eliminate scum and sludge settling problems and to save input energy.

Based on the experiment results of laboratory scale modified anoxic-oxic process for leachate treatment, biological nitrogen removal program was verified in terms of SS, COD, and TN concentration. These measured water qualities concentration could be predicted by biological nitrogen removal program with R2 of 0.994, 0.987, 0.990, respectively. No error was occurred between water qualities concentration and quite wide range of water qualities concentration (i.e., 50-4200 mg/L) during the modelling. Each unit and final effluent of simulated concentration was kept good relationship with that of measured concentration therefore this biological nitrogen removal program for sewage or wastewater treatment plants has good reliance.

In this study, the organic matter of effluents from sewage treatment plants, located in the Nakdong watershed was investigated. Regression equations were computed using treated sewage data to convert the chemical oxygen demand(COD) concentrations, which are mostly available from an open database, into total organic carbon(TOC) concentrations. The average concentration of organic matter in the sewage treatment plant effluents were 2.2 16.8 mg/L for COD and 3.4 14.3 mg/L for TOC. The concentrations of COD were positively correlated with the TOC concentrations. The correlation between COD and TOC was relatively high, at 0.865(p<0.01). Based on these results, regression analysis was conducted. The regression equation for TOC was 1.651×CODMn-0.084 (R2=0.84). Furthermore, organic matter-related databases for more sewage treatment plants need to be built in order to establish TOC standards and manage the water quality.

Organophosphorus pesticides (OPPs) contents in the sewage sludge derived from the residential and industrial areas were determined in order to characterize contemporary organic contamination levels as a part of the ongoing development of the environmentally sound sewage sludge management strategy in Korea. OPPs were extracted from freeze-dried sludges in a ultrasonic extractor. The extracts were cleaned-up by florisil column and subsequently fed into gas chromatograph/nitrogen phosphorus detector (GC/NPD) for determining OPP contents. Diazinon, dimethoate, disulfoton, EPN, malathion, methyl parathion, parathion, phorate and sulfotep were present in the appreciable amount in the domestic sewage sludges. The sum of the 9 OPPs in the sewage sludge varied from 534.8 to 15552.1 ㎍/kg, dry wt..

The 16 priority PAHs (Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons) designated by US Environmental Protection Agency were analyzed for some digested sludges from wastewater treatment plants in Korea. PAHs are an important group of organic contaminants present in sewage sludge due to their persistence and toxic potential. PAHs were extracted from freeze-dried sludges using a methylene chloride-methanol (2:1) mixture in a soxhlet extractor. The extracts were cleaned-up by silica gel/alumina combination column and subsequently fed into gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer (GC/MS) for determining PAH contents. The sum of the 16 PAHs in the sewage sludge varied from 534.8 to 5754.5 ㎍/kg, dry wt.. In the sewage sludge, phenanthrene appears as the most abundant PAHs, followed by naphthalene, pyrene, fluoranthene. Source of the investigated sewage sludges relatively predominated pyrogenic. PAHs levels of sewage sludges in Korea appeared to be lower than those in other countries.

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are an important group of organic contaminants present in sewage sludge, due to their persistence, toxic, bioaccumulative and long range transfer. These characters make themselves as Persistent Organic Pollutants(POPs) in Long Range Transboundary Air Pollutions convention(LRTAP) of Europe. A method of the gas chromatographicmass spectrometric (GCMS) determination of PAHs present in sewage sludge was developed and applied to analyzed samples from five sewerage treatment plants (SWTPs), having different treatment types. PAHs were extracted from freeze-dried samples by toluene 16 hours in a soxhlet extraction system. The sludge extracts were cleaned-up by an activated silica gel column chromatography. The sum of the 16 US Environmental Protection Agency PAHs sewage sludge samples varied from 2.44 to 4.82 ㎍/ g. Concentration of emission carcinogen PAHs(PAHcarc), such as Benzo(a)anthracene, Benzo(b)fluoran- thene, Benzo(k)fluoranthene, Benzo(a)pyrene, Dibenzo(a,h)anthracene and Indeno(1,2,3-cd)pyrene ranged from 0.62 to 1.03 ㎍/g. The total amount of PAHs emission from sewage sludge in Korea was calculated as a top-down approach. PAHs and ∑PAHcarc from sewage treatment plants had emitted to environment by several pathway. The highest amount of emission to the environment was remarked in the ocean dumping(PAHs and ∑PAHcarc emissions were 1155.95 kg/year and 5040.32 kg/year, respectively).