• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.36 no.11
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• pp.791-802
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• 2014

Energy shortage is being exacerbated due to the increase of energy consumption and depletion of fossil fuels. In order to release the energy crisis, new types of energy resources such as small hydropower, solar power, wind power and biomass have been already developed or actively researched. Recently, osmotic power, which harvests energy from salinity gradient between seawater and fresh water, is considered as a feasible candidate. Among the osmotic power processes, pressure retarded osmosis (PRO) is widely gaining attention because of no emission of carbon dioxide and less sensitivity to the external environmental conditions. However, PRO process is facing difficulties such as the lack of specialized PRO membrane and optimization technologies. Therefore, PRO was reviewed in this paper in terms of theoretical background, membrane development, process development and fouling mechanism to provide insights and suggest the future direction of PRO research.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.30 no.3 s.110
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• pp.185-191
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• 2005

Importance of alternative energy has been increasing due to environmental issues and lack of fossil fuels. In addition, heating cost that occupies from 30 to $40\%$ of the total production cost in the protected cultivation sector in Korea needs to be reduced for profitability and global competition. But, study on geothermal energy to solve these problems has not been activated for Korean protected cultivation. This study was conducted to develop an optimized geothermal exchange system through fundamental test of heat transfer characteristics in soil such as thermal diffusivity, changes in soil temperature during heating and cooling operations, and restorations of soil temperature after the heater was fumed off, These issues were investigated using computer simulation for different depths. The simulated characteristics were evaluated through controlled tests. Simulated characteristics of heat transfer in the soil at different depths showed a reasonable agreement with the results of the controlled tests. All of computer simulation and controlled tests, soil temperatures changed at 10cm and 20cm distance from pipe. but don't change at more than 30cm distance. It means that distances of heat transfer of the soil ranged from 20 to 30cm a day. Based on these results, the optimum spacing between adjacent heat exchange pipes and the pitch were selected as 50 and 40cm, respectively.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.25 no.12
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• pp.1450-1457
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• 2015

To overcome the depletion of fossil fuels and environmental problems in future, the research and production of biofuels have attracted attention largely. Thermophilic microorganisms produce effective and robust enzymes which can hydrolyze plant biomass and survive under harsh bioprocessing conditions. Caldicellulosiruptor bescii, which can degrade unpretreated plants and grow on them, is the one of the best candidates for consolidated bioprocessing (CBP). C. bescii can hydrolyze pectin efficiently as well as the major plant cell wall components, cellulose and hemicelluloses. Many glycosyl hydrolases and carbohydrate lyases with multidomain structure play an important role in plant biomass decomposition. Recently genetic tools for metabolic engineering of C. bescii have developed and bioethanol production from unpretreated biomass is achieved in C. bescii. Here, we review the recent studies for biomass degradation by C. bescii and bioethanol production in C. bescii in order to provide information about metabolic engineering of themophilic bacteria and biofuel development.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.1556-1571
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• 1993

Nitrogen oxides ($NO_x$) are air pollutants which are generated from the combustion of fossil fuels. Stage combustion is an effective method to reduce $NO_x$ emissions. The effects of $NO_x$ reduction by stage combustion in a pilot scale combustor(6.6kW) have been investigated using propane gas flames laden with NH$_{3}$ as Fuel-N. The results in this study are follows; (1) $NO_x$ emissions are dependent on the reducing environment of fuel-rich zone regardless of total air ratio. The maximum $NO_x$ reduction is at the stoichiometric ratio of 0.8 to 0.9 in the reducing zone. (2) $NO_x$ reduction is maximum when burnout air is injected at the point where the oxygen in reducing zone is almost consumed. (3) $NO_x$ reduction is dependent upon the temperature of reducing zone with best effect above 950.deg. C in the reducing zone. (4) The fuel stage combustion is more effective to reduce $NO_x$ formation in the wide range of stoichiometric ratio than two stage combustion. (5) The results of this study could be utilized mainly in a design strategy for low $NO_x$ emission from the combustion of high fuel-nitrogen in energy sources ratio than as an indication of the absolute levels of $NO_x$ which can be achieved by stage combustion techniques in large scale facilities.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.27 no.9
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• pp.466-470
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• 2017

With the matters of climate change, energy security and resource depletion, a growing pressure exists to search for replacements for fossil fuels. Among various sustainable energy sources, hydrogen is thought of as a clean energy, and thus efficient hydrogen storage is a major issue. In order to realize efficient and safe hydrogen storage, various porous materials are being explored as solid-states materials for hydrogen storage. For those purposes, it is a prerequisite to characterize a material's textural properties to evaluate its hydrogen storage performance. In general, the textural properties of porous materials are analyzed by the Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) measurement using nitrogen gas as a probe molecule. However, nitrogen BET analysis is sometimes not suitable for materials possessing small pores and surfaces with high curvatures like MOFs because the nitrogen molecule may sometimes be too large to reach the entire porous framework, resulting in an erroneous value. Hence, a smaller probe molecule for BET measurements (such as hydrogen) may be required. In this study, we describe a cost-effective novel cryostat for BET measurement that can reach temperatures below the liquefaction of hydrogen gas. Temperature and cold volume of the cryostat are corrected, and all measurements are validated using a commercial device. In this way, direct observation of the hydrogen adsorption properties is possible, which can translate directly into the determination of textural properties.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.30-50
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• 2017

Currently, exhaust gas emitted from thermal power plants and various combustion facilities that consume large amounts of fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas contains high concentrations of $CO_2$ and is a major cause of global warming. Conventionally, as a countermeasure against this problem, research and development are being carried out from various fields, and it is considered to be one of the most promising methods for separating and recovering $CO_2$ in the exhaust gas. One of the reasons for the low use of carbon dioxide is oxidized among the carbon compounds and is present in the most stable state. From the viewpoint of $CO_2$ emissions, $CO_2$ immobilization technology, which converts $CO_2$ into chemically useful compounds, is considered to be more important.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.111-117
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• 2006

The improvement of energy conservation mandates decrease consumption of fossil fuels and minimize negative impacts on the environment, which originates from large cooling and heating demand. The absorption heat pump technology has a large potential for energy saving in this respect. Adsorption heat pump is a means to upgrade waste heat without addition of extra thermal energy. The increase of absorbed amount is of great importance for absorption heat pump cycle. In this study, in order to improve the performance of absorber, the absorbers of two different types have been investigated using methanol-glycerine as a working fluid. The former was tangential feed of liquid phase without spiral tube in the absorber and the latter was with spiral tube in the absorber. The latter was found to be more effective in enhancing the mass and heat transfer to increase the absorption performance.

• Journal of Korea Society of Industrial Information Systems
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.95-105
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• 2019

The importance of environmental industry was recognized as a major issue for the environmental problems (climate change, exhaustion of fossil fuels) of the 21st century. Many country and korea as well are exerting an effort to make plans to develop the environmental industry, expand the domestic market, and make it a global industry. According to this trend, the gyeongbuk province has also designated the environmental industry as a strategic industry with high potential for development when recognizing new growth industries. Gyeongbuk province is faced with a number of unsolved tasks and has not quite grasped current situations of the environmental industry. Based on the policy tasks, the detailed plans for the environmental industry in the gyeongbuk province include: establishing a new organization which will be in charge of various works or strengthening the current organization to expend the supporting developing organization for the environmental industry and the efficiency guidelines.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.26-31
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• 2007

Hydrogen has a high potential to be a renewable substitute for fossil fuels, because of its high gravimetric energy density and environment friendliness. In particular, Magnesium have attracted much interest since their hydrogen capacity exceeds that of known metal hydrides. One of the approaches to improve the kinetic is addition of metal oxide. In this paper, the effect of $Fe_2O_3$ concentration on the kinetics of Mg hydrogen absorption reaction was investigated. $MgH_x-Fe_2O_3$ composites have been synthesized by hydrogen induced mechanical alloying. The powder synthesized was characterized by XRD, SEM and simultaneous TG, DSC analysis. The hydrogenation behaviors were evaluated by using a sievert's type automatic PCT apparatus. Absorption and desorption kinetics of Mg catalyzed with 5,10 mass% $Fe_2O_3$ are determined at 423, 473, 523, 573, 623K.

• KIEAE Journal
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.5-13
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• 2014

This paper introduces emergy(spelled with "m") that is a new environmental indicator in architecture, aiming to clarify conflicting claims of building design components in the process of energy-retrofit. Much of design practitioners' attention on low energy use in operational phases, may simply shift the lowered environmental impact within the building boundary to large consumption of energy in another area. Specifically, building energy reduction strategies without a holistic view starting from natural formation, may lead to the depletion of non-renewable geobiological sources (e.g. minerals, fossil fuels, etc.), which leaves a building with an isolated energy-efficient object. Therefore, to overcome the narrow outlook, this research discusses the total ecological impact of a building which embraces all process energy as well as environmental cost represented by emergy. A case study has been conducted to explore emergy-driven design work. In comparison with operational energy-driven scenarios, the results elucidate how energy and emergy-oriented decision-making bring about different design results, and quantify building components' emergy contribution in the end. An average-size ($101.9m^2$) single family house located in South Korea was sampled as a benchmark case, and the analysis of energy and material use was conducted for establishment of the baseline. Adoption of the small building is effective for the goal of study since this research intends to measure environmental impact according to variation of passive design elements (windows size, building orientation, wall materials) with new metric (emergy) regardless of mechanical systems. Performance simulations of operational energy were developed and analyzed separately from the calculation of emergy magnitudes in building construction, and then the total emergy demand of each proposed design was evaluated. Emergy synthesis results verify that the least operational energy scenario requires greater investment in indirect energy in construction, which clearly reveals that efficiency gains are likely to be overwhelmed by increment of material flows. This result places importance on consideration of indirect energy use underscoring necessity of emergy evaluation towards the environment-friendly building in broader sense.