• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
• /
• v.18 no.4
• /
• pp.310-315
• /
• 1999

The feasibility of an absorbent biofilter system was examined for rural wastewater treatment. Hydraulic loading rates varied from 50 to 250 cm/day. Effluent of the septic tank was fed into the absorbent biofilter, and small ventilation fan was provided to supply air at the rate of 250 L/min to aerate the biofilter. The biofilter system demonstrated high removal rates for $BOD_5$ and TSS at the loading rate of 150 cm/day, generally meeting the Korean effluent water quality standard of 20 mg/L applicable to both. The nutrient removal was less satisfactory than the results of $BOD_5$ and TSS, but it was within the expected range of biological treatment processes. Considering the abnormally high influent concentration of nutrients during the experiment, better performance results could have been obtained if ordinary domestic wastewater was used. The system performance was not significantly affected by the hydraulic loading up to 150 cm/day, which is far more than the loading limit of the sand filter systems. Maintenance requirement was minimal, and no problems with noise, odor, flies or sludge arose. Since the biofilter system can be operated at a distance, operation in remote rural area and multi-system connected to one control office might be advantageous to the rural area. Overall, considering the cost-effectiveness, stable performance, and minimum maintenance, the biofilter system was thought to be a competitive alternative to treat wastewater in Korean rural communities.

• Korean Journal of Ecology and Environment
• /
• v.39 no.4 s.118
• /
• pp.489-497
• /
• 2006

The feasibility of the Natural and Ecological Wastewater treatment System (NEWS) was examined for rural wastewater treatment in Korea. The intermittent trickling biofilter with high hydrophilic filter media was used for pretreatment for suspended solids and organic pollutants. The subsequent constructed wetland with porous granule materials was used for promoting nutrient removal. The results show that the removal efficiencies of the system were high with respect to the water quality parameters except COD. Even if the effluent from the biofilter did not meet the guidelines for wastewater treatment plant effluent in Korea in terms of $BOD_5$ and TN, the final effluent of the system meets the guidelines us to good performance of the constructed wetland. The regression analysis between pollutant loading rate and removal rate indicated that the system could have stable removal for SS, $BOD_5$, TN, and TP in the given influent ranges. The analysis in the winter period indicated that the wetland covered with transparent polycarbonate glass had the statble performance during the winter period dus to increase of temperature inside the wetland without any heating system. With the stable performance, effective poilutant removal, low maintenance, and cost-effectiveness, the NEWS could be considered as an alternative treatment system for decentralized regions and rural communities in Korea.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
• /
• v.29 no.5
• /
• pp.548-555
• /
• 2007

The control of wastewater treatment has two merits; one is to regulate water quality of effluent and the other is to reduce the cost of wastewater treatment. The purpose of this study was to control the ammonium nitrogen in effluent that is known to cause eutrophication. The control was based on simplified ASM No. 1 which had 3 component materials and 8 coefficients, and the control method was as following. Firstly the ammonium concentration of inflow was measured and the optimal aeration time in effluent was determined according to simplified ASM No. 1 to be 1.0 mg/L. If ammonium concentration of effluent was not equal to 1.0 mg/L, the influent ammonium was corrected by adaptive control. These processes above were repeatedly performed. The SBR running aerobic-anoxic phase had been controlled for 1 month with this method. As a result, the ammonium concentration of the effluent showed in the range of $0.22\sim3.1$ mg/L with an average concentration of 1.1 mg/L. The adaptive control method used in this study was found very useful to control and predict the effluent concentration of ammonium.

• Journal of Wetlands Research
• /
• v.23 no.1
• /
• pp.44-53
• /
• 2021

Urban stormwater runoff contains heavy metals that accumulate in on-site treatment systems, thus resulting to facility deterioration and maintenance problems. In order to resolve these problems, low impact development (LID) technologies that promote natural materials circulation are widely used. LID facilities are capable of treating heavy metals in the runoff by means of plant uptake; however, the uptake or phytoremediation capabilities of plants have not been studied extensively, making it difficult to select the most suitable plant species for a certain LID design. This study investigated the vegetative components of an LID facility, roadside plants, and plants in landscape areas with different heavy metal exposure and frequency to determine the uptake capabilities of different plant species. The plants harvested inside the LID facilities and roadsides with high vehicular traffic exhibited greater heavy metal concentrations in their tissues as compared with the plants in landscape areas. Generally, the accumulation of heavy metals in the plant tissues were found to be influenced by the environmental characteristics (i.e. influent water quality, air pollution level, etc.). Dianthus, Metasequoia, Rhododendron lateritium, and Mugwort were found to be effective in removing Zn in the urban stormwater runoff. Additionally, Dianthus, Metasequoia, Mugwort, and Ginkgo Biloba exhibited excellent removal of Cu. Cherry Tree, Metasequoia, and mugwort efficiently removed Pb, whereas Dianthus was also found to be effective in treating As, Cr, and Cd in stormwater. Overall, different plant species showed varying heavy metal uptake capabilities. The results of this study can be used as an effective tool in selecting suitable plant species for removing heavy metals in the runoff from different land use types.

• Journal of the Korea Organic Resources Recycling Association
• /
• v.17 no.1
• /
• pp.58-72
• /
• 2009

In this study, the organic matter and biomass was characterized by using respirometry based on ASM No.2d (Activated Sludge Model No.2d). The activated sludge models are based on the ASM No.2d model, published by the IAWQ(International Association on Water Quality) task group on mathematical modeling for design and operation of biological wastewater treatment processes. For this study, OUR(Oxygen Uptake Rate) measurements were made on filtered as well as non-filtered wastewater. Also, GC-FID and LC analysis were applied for the estimation of VFAs(Volatile Fatty Acids) COD(S_A) in slowly bio-degradable soluble substrates of the ASM No.2d. Therefore, this study was intended to clearly identify slowly bio-degradable dissolved materials(S_S) and particulate materials(X_I). In addition, a method capable of determining the accurate time to measure non-biodegradable COD(S_I), by the change of transition graphs in the process of measuring microbial OUR, was presented in this study. Influent fractionation is a critical step in the model calibrations. From the results of respirometry on filtered wastewater, the fraction of fermentable and readily biodegradable organic matter(S_F), fermentation products(S_A), inert soluble matter(S_I), slowly biodegradable matter(X_S) and inert particular matter(X_I) was 33.2%, 14.1%, 6.9%, 34.7%, 5.8%, respectively. The active heterotrophic biomass fraction(X_H) was about 5.3%.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
• /
• v.22 no.10
• /
• pp.1905-1919
• /
• 2000

The main motivation of this research is to develop an intelligent control strategy for Activated Sludge Process (ASP). ASP is a complex and nonlinear dynamic system because of the characteristic of wastewater, the change in influent flow rate, weather conditions, and etc. The mathematical model of ASP also includes uncertainties which are ignored or not considered by process engineer or controller designer. The ASP is generally controlled by a PID controller that consists of fixed proportional, integral, and derivative gain values. The PID gains are adjusted by the expert who has much experience in the ASP. The ASP model based on $Matlab^{(R)}5.3/Simulink^{(R)}3.0$ is developed in this paper. The performance of the model is tested by IWA(International Water Association) and COST(European Cooperation in the field of Scientific and Technical Research) data that include steady-state results during 14 days. The advantage of the developed model is that the user can easily modify or change the controller by the help of the graphical user interface. The ASP model as a typical nonlinear system can be used to simulate and test the proposed controller for an educational purpose. Various control methods are applied to the ASP model and the control results are compared to apply the proposed intelligent control strategy to a real ASP. Three control methods are designed and tested: conventional PID controller, fuzzy logic control approach to modify setpoints, and fuzzy-PID control method. The proposed setpoints changer based on the fuzzy logic shows a better performance and robustness under disturbances. The objective function can be defined and included in the proposed control strategy to improve the effluent water quality and to reduce the operating cost in a real ASP.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
• /
• v.22 no.2
• /
• pp.331-340
• /
• 2000

The existing two-phase biological fluidized bed has some problems such as limit of oxygen transfer and blockade of fluidized distributor. In this study, three-phase swirl flow biological fluidized bed has designed to solve the problems and to investigate its running characteristics. TOC of influent synthetic wastewater was approximately $70mg/{\ell}$. HRT of reactor was 1.6 hours. Mean particle size of sand, as packing media, was 0.397mm and packing volume was varied from $200m{\ell}/{\ell}$ to $600m{\ell}/{\ell}$ by stages in the bed. The amount of biomass and effluent water quality was throughly investigated in the bed. Showing experiment results from the above conditions, it was possible to solve the problems of existing fluidized bed and to keep DO of $3mg/{\ell}$ or more. And it was also TOC removal rate of 91 to 94 %, MLVSS of 2,360 to $3,860mg/{\ell}$, MLVSS per g-media of 8.4 to 17.3 mg/g, F/M ratio of 0.59 to $1.04kg-TOC/kg-MLVSS{\cdot}day$, biofilm thickness of $35{\sim}71{\mu}m$ and sludge productivity of 1.03 to $2.35kg-SS/m^3{\cdot}day$. Optimal conditions in this experimental were as follows.; those were biofilm thickness of approximately $54{\mu}m$. MLVSS per g-media of 13 mg and media packing volume of 350 to $400m{\ell}/{\ell}$ when F/M ratio was low, treatment efficiency was high and sludge productivity was low. Showing the media with optics microscope in this optimal condition, attached microbes such as Epistylis sp. were observed. From SEM photographs, it showed that Coccus adhere to and grow on the media surface.