• Environmental Analysis Health and Toxicology
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.203-216
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• 1999

This paper describes a set of multi-pathway models for estimating health risk to lead. The models link concentrations of an environmental contaminant (lead) in air, water and food to human exposure through inhalation, ingestion, and dietary routes. Exposure is used as the foundation for predicting risk of health detriment within the population. The process of estimating exposure using often limited data and extrapolating to a large diverse population requires many assumption, inferences, and simplification. This paper is divided into four section. The first section provides lead contaminant levels on obtaining environmental concentration of air, tap water, and foods. The second section provides a discussion of exposure parameters and uncertainty associated predicting human health risk of contaminants. The third and fourth section illustrate lifetime average daily exposure (LADE) and excess cancer risk (ECR) based on exposure parameters. The relationship between concentration of lead in an environmental medium and human exposure is determined with pathway exposure factors (PEFs). The calculation of LADE and ECR is carried out using Monte-Carlo simulation with probability density function of exposure parameters. Examination of the result reveals that, for lead exposure, ingestion (food) is the dominant route of exposure rather than inhalation (air), and ingestion (tap eater).

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.27-35
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• 2013

In this study, three dimensional and two dimensional laboratory experiments were conducted to investigate the effect of water table rising on DNAPL migration, contaminants mass discharge ($M_d$), and residual NAPL distribution. The accumulation of TCE in unsaturated zone was observed in both two and three dimensional experiments. This implies DNAPL sources could exist in unsaturated zone at contaminated sites. It has been investigated that the TCE concentration is proportional to the areal ratio of residual TCE. This means the residual TCE obviously could affect the TCE concentration in aquifer system. The results of the two-dimensional experiment indicated that the contaminant sources in unsaturated zone could lead the $M_d$ increasing with water table rising and the source zone heterogeneity could also highly affect the $M_d$.

• ALGAE
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.133-139
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• 2006

Outdoor cultivation of cyanobacterium Spirulina platensis was carried out for 40 days in a batch mode. A half concentration of the SOT based on the underground water was used as culture medium. Working volume was 5.7 tons with 0.2 m depth. During cultivation, mean water temperature, DO and light intensity were all in proper conditions for the S. platensis growth. The adjustment of pH to over 10 with Na2CO3 and addition of the 1.5% natural salt were very effective to delete contaminant organisms, Chlamydomonas moewusii and Chlorella minutissima occurred one after the other in the culture. The mean productivity of the biomass based on the dry cell weight from 14 to 25 days, after the contaminants were deleted, was 7.8 g ·m–2· d–1, which was relatively high productivity in that a half concentration of the SOT was used for the culture. Underground water used in the culture minimized contaminants invasion and addition of the 1.5% natural salt was effective to delete contaminants as well as acted as mineral supplement in outdoor cultivation of S. platensis. Harvesting using the floating activity of S. platensis was effective from mass floating in day time after overnight without agitation and illumination.

• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.17-20
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• 2018

The dependency of the photovoltaic performance of p-/n-type silicon solar-cells on the metallic contaminant type (Fe, Cu, and Ni) and concentration was investigated. The minority-carrier recombination lifetime was degraded with increasing metallic contaminant concentration, however, the degradation sensitivity of recombination lifetime was lower at n-type than p-type silicon wafer, which means n-type silicon wafer have an immunity to the effect of metallic contamination. This is because heavy metal ions with positive charge have a much larger capture cross section of electron than hole, so that reaction with electrons occurs much more easily. The power conversion efficiency of n-type solar-cells was degraded by 9.73% when metallic impurities were introduced in the silicon bulk, which is lower degradation compared to p-type solar-cells (15.61% of efficiency degradation). Therefore, n-type silicon solar-cells have a potential to achieve high efficiency of the solar-cell in the future with a merit of immunity against metal contamination.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.119-128
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• 2004

Environmental impact of waste tires as gound-reinforcing material is studied. Analysis for chemical compounds and toxic effect were performed on effluents from twelve lysimeters in which waste tires were mixed with sand and three initially different environmental solutions of acidic, neutral, and basic circulated through the mixture. The test results of effluents collected from the lysimeters provided that the contaminant concentrations were lower than those of Korean drinking water standards for all the selected and tested metal elements. While iron concentration increased slightly with the exposure period, other metal concentrations decreased with the number of circulation times. From the comparison with previous investigations, the contaminant concentration decreased with the increase of tire size, i.e. increases with the increase of the exposed surface of tire metals. From the toxicity tests, no deteriorative effect was observed and it could be concluded that waste tires are not biologically hostile materials.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.32 no.6C
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• pp.267-274
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• 2012

The conventional approach to evaluate the contaminant transport in soils adopts the macro-scale implementation while the pore configuration and network is a dominant factor to determine the fate of contaminant. However, the observation of fate and transport at pore scale may not be readily approachable because of the computational expenses to solve Navier-Stokes equation. We herein present the 2D Lattice-Boltzmann method that enables to assess the local fluid velocity and density efficiently for the case of single phase and multi-components. The solute fate spatio-temperal space is explicitly determined by the advection of fluid flow. Two different types of idealized pore space provides the path of fluid. Also, solute transport, the velocity field and average concentration of solute are computed in steady state. Results show that the pore geometry such as tortuosity mainly affect the solute fate. It highlights the significance of the pore configuration and shape in granular soils and rock discontinuity in spite of the equivalent porosity.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
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• 2002.04a
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• pp.62-65
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• 2002

Permeable reactive barriers (PRBs) are in-situ barriers constructed in a subsurface to treat contaminated groundwater using various reactive media. The common reactive medium used in PRB is zero-valent iron, which has been widely used to treat chlorinated solvents (i.e., PCE, TCE). A disadvantage of iron media is high cost. In this study, waste foundry sands were tested to determine the feasibility of their use as a low cost reactive medium. Batch and column tests were conducted with TCE to determine transport parameters and reactivity of the foundry sands. The reactivities of foundry sands for common groundwater contaminants are comparable to or slightly higher than those for Peerless iron, a common medium used in PRBs. In addition, the TOC and clay in foundry sands can significantly retard the movement of target contaminant, which may result in lower effluent concentration of contaminant due to biodegradation. In general, PRBs 1-m thick can be constructed with many foundry sands to treat TCE provided the zero-valent iron content in the foundry sand is higher than 1%.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers Conference
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• 1998.10a
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• pp.388-394
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• 1998

In this study, the influence of soil contaminant on the cement solidification treatment was considered. Unconfined compression strength(UCS) test was carried out for solidificated specimen, Setting time was measured for cement slurry that was mixed with leachate and wastewater. It was appeared that treatment effect were affected by the the kind of soil, organic content, component of pore water and its concentration. And UCS of samples which were cured in the leachate were decrease about l/5. Especially for the marine clay, UCS of samples which were cured in leachate during 180 days were smaller than 90 days cured samples in the case of cement mixing ratio 5%, 10%.

• Advances in environmental research
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.183-196
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• 2015

Migration of leachate generated through embankment of construction waste soil (CWS) in low-lying areas was studied through physical and chemical analysis. A leachate solution containing soluble cations from CWS was found to have a pH above 9.0. To determine the distribution coefficients in the alkali solution, column and migration tests were conducted in the laboratory. The physical and chemical properties of CWS satisfied environmental soil criteria; however, the pH was high. The effective diffusion coefficients for CWS ions fell within the range of $0.725-3.3{\times}10^{-6}cm^2/s$. Properties of pore water and the amount of undissolved gas in pore water influenced advection-diffusion behavior. Contaminants migrating from CWS exhibited time-dependent concentration profiles and an advective component of transport. Thus, the transport equations for CWS contaminant concentrations satisfied the differential equations in accordance with Fick's 2nd law. Therefore, the migration of the contaminant plume when the landfilling CWS reaches water table can be predicted based on pH using the effective diffusion coefficient determined in a laboratory test.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
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• 2001.04a
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• pp.128-131
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• 2001

We evaluated natural attenuation of petroleum hydrocarbons in a shallow aquifer using a modeling study. The studied shallow aquifer was severely contaminated with petroleum hydrocarbons, especially toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes (i.e, TEX). The exact spill history was not known. Therefor we used a contaminant level in May 1999 (the first sampling date of our integrated study) as an initial contaminant concentration. we calibrated required transport parameters using the contamination levels obtained from groundwater analyses in September of 1999. For fate and transport of the petroleum contaminants, five case 2 with sorption and degradation. case 3 with sorption and degradation (half decay constant compared with case 2), case 4 with degradation but no sorption, and case 5 with sorption but no degradation. For sorption and degradation, a linear sorption isotherm and first order irreversible decay was assumed, respectively and no additional contamination source to groundwater is also assumed.