• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
• /
• 2004.04a
• /
• pp.472-472
• /
• 2004

Numerous studies on urban groundwater have been carried out in many other countries. Urban groundwater shows a unique hydrologic system because of complex urban characteristics such as road pavement, sewers and public water supply systems. These urban facilities may change the characteristics of groundwater recharge but contaminate its quality as well. There have been several researches on urban groundwater in Seoul. Seoul has been industrialized very rapidly so that the city has large population. The recent population in Seoul amounts to more than ten millions, corresponding to a very high density of about 17, 000 people/km$^2$. Therefore, many factors affect the groundwater quality and quantity in Seoul. Nowadays, groundwater in Seoul is being extracted for construction, industrial use, and drinking and so on. There are 15, 714 wells in Seoul and its annual usage is 41, 425, 977m$^3$(in 2001). Therefore, systematic studies are needed to properly manage and use the groundwater in Seoul. The purposes of this study in progress are to identify geochemical characteristics of groundwater in Seoul and to determine the extent of groundwater contamination and its relationship with urban characteristics. For this study, groundwater was sampled from more than 400 preexisting wells that were randomly selected throughout the Seoul area. For all samples, major cations together with Si, Al, Fe, Pb, Hg For 200 samples among them, TCE, PCE, BTEX were also analyzed by GC. Our study shows that groundwater types of Seoul are distributed broadly from Ca-HCO$_3$ type to Ca-Cl＋NO$_3$ type. The latter type indicates anthropogenic contamination. Among cations, Ca is generally high in most samples. In some samples, Na and K are dominant. The dominant anions change widely from HCO$_3$ to Cl＋NO$_3$. The anion composition is considered to effectively indicate the contribution of distinct anthropogenic sources. In addition, major ions are positively proportional to total dissolved solid (TDS) except K and NO$_3$. Thus, we consider that TDS may be used as an effective indicator of the extent of pollution. However, the increase of TDS may result from increased water-rock interaction. To determine the extent of groundwater contamination, it is needed to figure out the baseline water quality in Seoul. Furthermore, detailed geochemical studies are required to find out pollution sources and their corresponding hydrochemical parameters.

• Journal of Korea Soil Environment Society
• /
• v.2 no.3
• /
• pp.69-80
• /
• 1997

This investigation was conducted to provide information for characteristics of environmental pollution by the heavy metals from the abandoned gold mine in order to characterize the distribution patterns and environmental damages of the contaminants to the surrounding environment. Through analysis of CN, Cd, Cu, Pb, Zn, As, Cr, and Hg in a mine tailings, paddy soils, and stream sediments, the physico-chemical properties of the mine tailings and paddy soils were measured. The pH's were 5.4, 8.4 for the paddy soil and mine tailing, respectively. The maximum contents of CN, Pb, Cd, and As the in mine tailing were 99.98, 1,752.72, 31.88, and 298.50 mg/kg, respectively. The amounts of these ions were higher than the standard level of industrial area in Korea. The average content of CN and heavy metals in the paddy soils were higher than the background level of heavy metals in the unpolluted paddy soils around the mine. Especially, the contents of heavy metals in the paddy soils along the adjacent stream were higher compared to the paddy soil that was not influenced by the mine tailings. The contents of CN and heavy metals in the stream sediment close to the mine area were similar to those of the mine tailings, but decreased along the distance of the stream farther away from the tailings that was the source of these pollutants.

• Journal of Life Science
• /
• v.25 no.5
• /
• pp.487-495
• /
• 2015

We carried out pH stability, chemical inhibition, chemical modification, and pH-dependent kinetic parameter assessments to further characterize protocatechuate 3,4-dioxygenase from Pseudomonas pseudoalcaligenes KF707. Protocatechuate 3,4-dioxygenase was stable in the pH range of 4.5~10.5. L-ascorbate and glutathione were competitive inhibitors with $K_{is}$ values of 0.17 mM and 0.86 mM, respectively. DL-dithiothreitol was a noncompetitive inhibitor with a $K_{is}$ value of 1.57 mM and a $K_{ii}$ value of 8.08 mM. Potassium cyanide, p-hydroxybenzoate, and sodium azide showed a noncompetitive inhibition pattern with $K_{is}$ values of 55.7 mM, 0.22 mM, and 15.64 mM, and $K_{ii}$ values of 94.1 mM, 8.08 mM, and 662.64 mM, respectively. $FeCl_{2}$ was the best competitive inhibitor with a $K_{is}$ value of $29{\mu}M$. $FeCl_{3}$, $MnCl_{2}$, $CoCl_{2}$, and $AlCl_{3}$ were also competitive inhibitors with $K_{is}$ values of 1.21 mM, 0.85 mM, 3.98 mM, and 0.21 mM, respectively. Other metal ions showed noncompetitive inhibition patterns. The pH-dependent kinetic parameter data showed that there may be at least two catalytic groups with pK values of 6.2 and 9.4 and two binding groups with pK values of 5.5 and 9.0. Lysine, cysteine, tyrosine, carboxyl, and histidine were modified by their own specific chemical modifiers, indicating that they are involved in substrate binding and catalysis.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
• /
• 2004.09a
• /
• pp.119-120
• /
• 2004

Urban groundwater has a unique hydrologic system because of the complex surface and subsurface infrastructures such as deep foundation of many high buildings, subway systems, and sewers and public water supply systems. It generally has been considered that increased surface impermeability reduces the amount of groundwater recharge. On the other hand, leaks from sewers and public water supply systems may generate the large amounts of recharges. All of these urban facilities also may change the groundwater quality by the recharge of a myriad of contaminants. This study was performed to determine the factors controlling the recharge of deep groundwater in an urban area, based on the hydrogeochemical characteristics. The term ‘contamination’ in this study means any kind of inflow of shallow groundwater regardless of clean or contaminated. For this study, urban groundwater samples were collected from a total of 310 preexisting wells with the depth over 100 m. Random sampling method was used to select the wells for this study. Major cations together with Si, Al, Fe, Pb, Hg and Mn were analyzed by ICP-AES, and Cl, N $O_3$, N $H_4$, F, Br, S $O_4$and P $O_4$ were analyzed by IC. There are two groups of groundwater, based on hydrochemical characteristics. The first group is distributed broadly from Ca-HC $O_3$ type to Ca-C1+N $O_3$ type; the other group is the Na+K-HC $O_3$ type. The latter group is considered to represent the baseline quality of deep groundwater in the study area. Using the major ions data for the Na+K-HC $O_3$ type water, we evaluated the extent of groundwater contamination, assuming that if subtract the baseline composition from acquired data for a specific water, the remaining concentrations may indicate the degree of contamination. The remainder of each solute for each sample was simply averaged. The results showed that both Ca and HC $O_3$ represent the typical solutes which are quite enriched in urban groundwater. In particular, the P$CO_2$ values calculated using PHREEQC (version 2.8) showed a correlation with the concentrations of maior inorganic components (Na, Mg, Ca, N $O_3$, S $O_4$, etc.). The p$CO_2$ values for the first group waters widely ranged between about 10$^{-3.0}$ atm to 10$^{-1.0}$ atm and differed from those of the background water samples belonging to the Na+K-HC $O_3$ type (<10$^{-3.5}$ atm). Considering that the p$CO_2$ of soil water (near 10$^{-1.5}$ atm), this indicates that inflow of shallow water is very significant in deep groundwaters in the study area. Furthermore, the P$CO_2$ values can be used as an effective parameter to estimate the relative recharge of shallow water and thus the contamination susceptibility. The results of our present study suggest that down to considerable depth, urban groundwater in crystalline aquifer may be considerably affected by the recharge of shallow water (and pollutants) from an adjacent area. We also suggest that for such evaluation, careful examination of systematically collected hydrochemical data is requisite as an effective tool, in addition to hydrologic and hydrogeologic interpretation.ion.ion.