• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.399-405
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• 2011

In a desalination technology using RO membranes, chemical cleaning makes damage for membrane surface and membrane life be shortened. In this research cleaning technology using direct osmosis (DO) was introduced to apply it under the condition of high pH and high concentration of feed. When the high concentration of feed is injected to the concentrate side after release of operating pressure, then backward flow occurred from treated water toward concentrated for osmotic pressure. This flow reduces fouling on the membrane surface. Namely, flux of DO was monitored under pH 3, 5, 10 and 12 conditions at feed concentrations of NaCl 40,000 mg/L, 120,000 mg/L and 160,000 mg/L. As a result, DO flux in pH 12 increased about 21% than pH 3. DO cleaning was performed under the concentrate NaCl 160,000 mg/L of pH 12 during 20 minutes. Three kinds of synthetic feed water were used as concentrates. They consisted of organic, inorganic and seawater; chemicals of SiO2 (200 mg/L), humic acid (50 mg/L) sodium alginate (50 mg/L) and seawater. As a result, fluxes were recovered to 17% in organic fouling, 15% in inorganic fouling and 14% of seawater fouling after cleaning using DO under the condition of concentrate NaCl 160,000 mg/L of pH 12.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.53-75
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• 2015

This paper provides an overview of the role of membranes in bioelectrochemical systems (BESs). Bioelectrochemical systems harvest clean energy from waste organic sources by employing indigenous exoelectrogenic bacteria. This energy is extracted in the form of bioelectricity or valuable biofuels such as ethanol, methane, hydrogen, and hydrogen peroxide. Various types of membranes were applied in these systems, the most common membrane being the cation exchange membrane. In this paper, we discuss three major bioelectrochemical technology research areas namely microbial fuel cells (MFCs), microbial electrolysis cells (MECs) and microbial desalination cells (MDCs). The operation principles of these BESs, role of membranes in these systems and various factors that affect their performance and economics are discussed in detail. Among the three technologies, the MFCs may be functional with or without membranes as separators while the MECs and MDCs require membrane separators. The preliminary economic analysis shows that the capital and operational costs for BESs will significantly decrease in the future due mainly to differences in membrane costs. Currently, MECs appear to be cost-competitive and energy-yielding technology followed by MFCs. Future research endeavors should focus on maximizing the process benefits while simultaneously minimizing the membrane costs related to fouling, maintenance and replacement.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.75-81
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• 2010

The aim of this work is to analyse and discuss the use of the Economic Evaluation and of some new "metrics" for an appropriate valuation of membrane operations in the logic of Process Intensification. In particular, the proposed approach has the goal to show how the utilized indicators can drive to the choice of the most convenient process. Although in this work the planned procedure is applied, as a case study, to the membrane-based systems for boron and arsenic removal from waters, the suggested approach can be generally applied to any other process of interest.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.1-12
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• 2010

Membrane distillation process was used for purification of pre-treated natural water (tap water). The rejection of inorganic and organic compounds in this process was investigated. The obtained rejection of inorganic solutes was closed to 100%, but the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) diffused through the membrane together with water vapour. The content of trihalomethanes (THMs) in the obtained distillate was two-three fold higher than that in the feed, therefore, the rejection of the total organic compounds present in the tap water was reduced to a level of 98%. The intensive membranes scaling was observed during the water separation. The morphology and composition of the fouling layer was studied using scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy dispersion spectrometry. The influence of thermal water pre-treatment performed in a heat exchanger followed by filtration on the MD process effectiveness was evaluated. This procedure caused that significantly smaller amounts of $CaCO_3$ crystallites were deposited on the membrane surface, and a high permeate flux was maintained over a period of 160 h.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.273-280
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• 2016

Pressure assisted forward osmosis (PAFO) is recently introduced because of its improved process efficiency to overcome drawbacks of forward osmosis (FO) such as low water flux and reverse solute diffusion. However, it is known that membrane fouling becomes deteriorated by additional hydraulic pressure applied in PAFO compared to FO. This study was performed to investigate possibility of intermittent pressure-assisted forward osmosis (I-PAFO) operation for fouling mitigation using colloidal silica particles as model foulants. FO, PAFO were operated as well to compare with. Two different solution pH conditions (pH 3, 10) were applied to see the effect of electrostatic interactions between the membrane and silica particles on fouling tendency. In the results, higher water flux was observed during pressurization and pressure relaxation periods in I-PAFO than water flux of PAFO, and FO on both pH conditions. Water flux decreased less in I-PAFO than PAFO after fouling. It resulted in higher water flux recovery in I-PAFO than PAFO after physical cleaning.

• Journal of Conservation Science
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.95-104
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• 2015

Excavated archaeological cast iron objects in improper storage are quickly corroded and disintegrated into block and powder finally. Hence desalination treatment which is a way of removing internal corrosive factors, especially chloride ion, is an important process. But desalination is often omitted or objects are dehydrated by alcohol because the destruction of objects could occur during desalting. Although current desalting methods mostly use an aqueous alkali solution, $OH^-$ ions of water could accelerate corrosion and broaden internal cracks cause of high surface tension. Therefore this study experimented desalting using ethyl alcohol, which is low surface tension, to investigate an effect of desalination. As a result, desalting using ethyl alcohol showed the similar or more effective results of desalting using water. In addition, as aspects of desalting safety, ethyl alcohol desalting method was smaller destruction of objects and extraction of Fe from the objects than the aqueous alkali solution. However, this study explored the possibility of desalting methods using organic solvent in fieldwork, so the results would provide basic date for making the safe and effective desalting method for archaeological cast iron objects through further experiments.

• Journal of the Korean Applied Science and Technology
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.188-193
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• 2015

Blast Furnace Slag is good for enhancing the qualities of concrete such as reducing hydration heat increasing fluidity, long-term strength and durability, but it has some problems: construction time is increased or the rotation rate of form is decreased due to low development of early strength. In this study, an aqueous alkali solution for alkali activated reaction was obtained by the electrolysis using concentrated water discharged from seawater desalination process. Prepared aqueous alkali solution was applied to produce mortars using blast furnace slag. The results can be summarized as follows : For the mortar, compressive strength was decreased below 2% of NaOH and increased below 6% of NaOH. And compressive strength was increased gradually with increasing NaOCl contents. However, NaCl contents of mortars caused a decrease of 28days strength above early strength.

• Journal of the Korean Electrochemical Society
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.287-294
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• 2009

Desalination effects of Capacitive deionization(CDI) process using activated carbon $TiO_2$ composite electrode. In this study, we made the activated carbon electrod and activated carbon $TiO_2$ composite electrode, which analysed at cyclic voltammetry and charge-discharge. The results measured for discharge capacitance in cyclic voltammetry were 125 F/g in activated carbon electrode and capacitance of activatd carbon composite electrode was increased about two time, 243 F/g. The $TiO_2$ content of activated carbon composite electrode was 10 wt.%. When it was added wtih TiO2, electric double layer adsorption content was increased, so it was increased 25% in ion removal ratio of activated carbon electrode.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.329-338
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• 2017

The problem of disposal of brine due to increased MD/RO desalination plant has recently become a big social issue. The chlor-alkali process through electrolysis of brine has been studied as a method to overcome this problem. In order to increase the electrolysis efficiency, a pretreatment process for removal of hard substances must be preceded. In this study, we investigated the mechanism of removal of hardness through chemical precipitation. As a result, Ca was greatly influenced by addition of $Na_2CO_3$, and Mg was strongly influenced by pH. Also, the addition of NaOH and $Na_2CO_3$ enabled simultaneous removal of Ca and Mg, and showed a removal efficiency of 99.9% or more. Finally, the residual concentrations of Ca and Mg in the brine after the reaction were 0.14 and 0.13 mg/L, respectively. Saturation index was calculated using Visual MINTEQ 3.1, and solid phase analysis of the precipitate was performed by FE-SEM and PXRD analysis. It was confirmed that precipitate formed by the formation of calcite and brucite.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.36 no.7
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• pp.492-497
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• 2014

This study investigated removal characteristics of organic matters in pretreatment and reverse osmosis (RO) membrane processes for seawater desalination. Also, the influence of the changes in characteristics of organic matters on the membrane fouling was assessed. The pretreatment processes included dual media filtration (DMF), pressurized membrane filtration (MF), and submerged membrane filtration (SMF). Turbidity, UV absorption at 254 nm, dissolved organic carbon, size exclusion chromatography (SEC), fluorescence excitation emission matrix (FEEM), and transparent exopolymer particles (TEP) in raw and processed waters were analyzed. Ions and minerals were not removed by any pretreatment process tested, but were removed over 99% through the RO membrane process. Hydrophobic organics, which can play major role in organic membrane fouling, were relatively readily removed compared with hydrophilic ones. Membrane based pretreatment such as MF and SMF exhibited better removals of organics than conventional DMF. As the levels of organics in pretreated water decreased, the silt density index (SDI) decreased. MF treated water exhibited the lowest SDI value; this is possibly due to the lowest TEP ($0.1-0.4{\mu}m$) concentrations.