• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.341-348
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• 2016

Micro-algae, one of the biological resources for alternative energy, has been heavily studied. Among various methods to analyze the status of the micro-algae including counting, screening, and flocculation, the flocculation approach has been widely accepted in many critical applications such as red tide removal study or microalgae resource study. To characterize the flocculation status of the micro-alga. A traditional optical modality, i.e., photospectrometry, measuring the optical density of the flocs has been frequently employed. While this traditional optical method needs shorter time than the counting method in flocculation status analysis, it has relatively lower detection accuracy. To address this issue, a novel real-time micro-algae flocculation analysis method based on the lens-free shadow imaging technique (LSIT) is introduced. Both single cell detection and floc detection are simultaneously available with a proposed lens-free shadow image, confirmed by comparing the results with optical microscope images. And three shadow parameters, e.g., number of flocs, effective area of flocs, and maximum size of floc, enabling quantification of the flocculation phenomenon of micro-alga, are firstly demonstrated in this article. The efficacy of each shadow parameter is verified with the real-time flocculation monitoring experiments using custom developed cohesive agents.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.147-153
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• 2018

This study investigates the role of microbial extracellular polymeric substances (EPSs) as bioflocculants to harvest microalgae (water-microalgae separation). The EPS extracted from waste activated sludge (WAS) by heat extraction were fractionated into soluble EPS (S-EPS), loosely-bound EPS (LB-EPS) and tightly-bound EPS (TB-EPS) forms. All the EPSs facilitated the flocculation of microalgal cells from stable growth medium. Of those EPSs, the TB-EPS showed the highest flocculating activity (FA) resulting in the substantial decrease in the amount of EPS added in terms of total organic carbon (TOC) during flocculation. The FA of microalgae was improved with the increase in TB-EPS dose, however, excessive dose of TB-EPS adversely affected it due to destabilization. Both LB- and TB-EPS could be utilized for flocculating microalgae as a sustainable option to the existing chemical-based flocculants. In addition to the conventional assessments, the effectiveness of the two bioflocculants for floc forming was also confirmed using a novel assessment of lens-free shadow imaging technique (LSIT), which was firstly applied for the rapid and quantitative assessment of microalgal flocculation.

• Proceedings of KOSOMES biannual meeting
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• 2017.11a
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• pp.154-154
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• 2017