• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.200-208
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• 2005

In this study, a new submerged membrane bioreactor process packed with granular sulfur (MBR-GS) was operated to identify the biological nitrogen removal behaviors with plating wastewater containing high-strength $NO_3{^-}$ concentration. The continuous denitrification was carried out at $20^{\circ}C$ with various nitrogen loading rates using synthetic wastewater, which composed of $NO_3{^-}$ and $HCO_3{^-}$, but also actual plating wastewater, which was collected from the effluent of the H metal plating company. As a result, high-rate denitrification in the range of $0.8kg\;NO_3{^-}-N/m^3\;day$ was accomplished at nitrogen loading rate of $0.9kg\;NO_3{^-}-N/m^3\;day$ using synthetic wastewater. Also, higher-rate denitrification with actual plating wastewater was achieved up to $0.91kg\;NO_3{^-}-N/m^3\;day$ at the loading rate of $1.11kg\;NO_3{^-}-N/m^3\;day$. Additionally, continuous filtration was possible during up to 30 days without chemical cleaning in the range of 20 cmHg of transmembrane pressure. On the basis of the proposed stoichiometry, ${SO_4}^{2-}$ production could be estimated efficiently, while observed alkalinity consumption was somewhat lower than theoretical value. Consequently, a new process, MBR-GS is capable of high-rate autotrophic denitrification by compulsive flux and expected to be utilized as an alternative of renovation techniques for nitrogen removal from not only plating wastewater but also municipal wastewater with low C/N ratio.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.161-170
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• 2014

It is essential to decrease energy consumption and excess sludge to economically operate sewage treatment plant. This becomes more important along with a ban on sea dumping and exhaustion of resource. Therefore, many researchers have been study on energy consumption reduction and strategies for minimization of excess sludge production from the activated sludge process. The aeration cost account for a high proportion of maintenance cost because sufficient air is necessary to keep nitrifying bacteria activity of which the oxygen affinity is inferior to that of heterotrophic bacteria. Also, additional costs are incurred to stabilize excess sludge and decrease the volume of sludge. There were anoxic, aerobic, membrane, deairation and concentration zone in this MBR process. Continuous aeration was provided to prevent membrane fouling in membrane zone and intermittent aeration was provided in aerobic zone through ammonia sensor. So, there was the minimum oxygen to remove $NH_4-N$ below limited quantity that could be eliminated in membrane zone. As the result of this control, energy consumption of aeration system declined by between 10.4 % and 19.1 %. Besides, we could maintain high MLSS concentration in concentration zone and this induced the microorganisms to be in starved condition. Consequentially, the amount of excess sludge decrease by about 15 %.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.33-42
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• 2018

Microscopic examination of the activated sludge and morphological characterization of the flocs provides detailed information about the treatment process. The aim of this study is to investigate the morphological parameters of flocs obtained from a thermophilic jet loop membrane bioreactor (JLMBR) in different sludge retention times (SRTs), considering EPS and SMP concentration, hydrophobicity, zeta potential. The results showed that irregularity decreased with the increasing SRT. The compactness value was calculated to be less than 1 for all SRTs. However, the sludge had a more compact structure when the SRT increased. Zeta potential increased whereas hydrophobicity and floc size reduced, with increasing SRT. Furthermore, 2-D porosity calculated using the hole ratio was higher at greater SRTs. Hence, there was a significant correlation between the results obtained using the imaging technique and operation conditions of thermophilic JLMBR.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.179-189
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• 2019

This study aimed to investigate the effect of temperature and solid retention time (SRT) on membrane fouling in a membrane bioreactors (MBRs). For this purpose, a lab-scale submerged MBR system was used. This system operated at two SRTs of 15 and 5 days, three various temperatures (20, 25 and $30^{\circ}C$) and hydraulic retention time (HRT) of 8 h. The results indicated that decreased the cake layer resistance and increased particles size of foulant due to increasing temperature and SRT. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) analysis show that the cake layer formed on the membrane surface, contained high levels of proteins and especially polysaccharides in extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) but absorbance intensity of EPS functional groups decreased with temperature and SRT. EEM analysis showed that the peak on the range of Ex/Em=220-240/350-400 in SRT of 15 and temperature of $30^{\circ}C$ indicates the presence of fulvic acid in the cake. In addition, as the temperature rise from 20 to $30^{\circ}C$, concentration of soluble microbial products (SMP) increased and COD removal reached 89%. Furthermore, the rate of membrane fouling was found to increase with decreasing temperature and SRT.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.59-66
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• 2024

This study evaluated the performance of a membrane aerated biofilm reactor (MABR) for nitrogen removal from a high-strength ammonia nitrogen-containing wastewater. The experimental setup consisted of four compartments that are sequentially anaerobic and aerobic to achieve complete nitrogen removal. The last compartment of the reactor setup contained a membrane bioreactor (MBR) to reduce sludge production in the system and to obtain a better-quality effluent. Continuous experiment over a period of 47 days showed that MABR exhibited excellent NH₄⁺-N removal efficiency (99.5%) compared to the control setup without MABR (56.5%). The final effluent NH₄⁺-N concentration obtained in the MABR was 2.99±1.56 mg/L. In contrast to NH₄⁺-N removal, comparable TOC removal values in the MABR and the control reactor (99.2% and 99.3%, respectively) showed that air supply through MABR is much more critical for denitrification than for organic removal. Further study to understand the effect of air supply rate and holding pressure on NH₄⁺-N removal in MABR revealed that an increase in both these parameters positively impacted reactor performance. These parameters are related to oxygen supply to the biofilm formed over the membrane surface, which in turn influenced NH₄⁺-N removal in MABR. Among the two different strategies to control biofilm over the membrane surface, results showed that scouring for a duration of 10 min on a weekly basis, along with mixing air supply, could be an effective method.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.105-119
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• 2011

This study presents the tests of an Immersed Membrane BioReactor (IMBR) equipped with a draft tube and focuses on the influence of hydrodynamic conditions on membrane fouling in a pilot-scale using a hollow fiber membrane module of ZW-10 under ambient conditions. In this system, the cross-flow velocities across the membrane surface were induced by a cylindrical draft-tube. The relationship between cross-flow velocity and aeration strength and the influence of the cross-flow on fouling rate (under various hydrodynamic conditions) were investigated using Multi-Dimension Scaling (MDS) analysis. MDS technique is especially suitable for samples with many variables and has relatively few observations, as the data about Membrane Bio-Reactor (MBR) often is. Observations and variables are analyzed simultaneously. According to the results, a specialized form of MDS, CoPlot enables presentation of the results in a two dimensional space and when plotting variables ratio (output/input) rather than original data the efficient units can be visualized clearly. The results indicate that: (i) aeration plays an important role in IMBR performance; (ii) implementing the MDS approach with reference to the variables ratio is consequently useful to characterize performance changes for data classification.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.35 no.5
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• pp.371-380
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• 2013

Though MBR process has many advantages, the greatest risk factors in operating MBR process are occurrence of membrane fouling and decrease of flux. It is very difficult to find exact mechanism due to complex influence by many effects, although there have been recently many studies of membrane fouling. The purposes of this study are firstly evaluating bioreactor of lab-scale and micro-filtration hollow fiber membrane, secondly investigating correlation between foulants affecting membrane performance and membrane fouling, and lastly evaluating various parameters affecting fouling and applicability of membrane fouling reducer. This study found that TMP was increasing rapidly and showed 0.32 bar and the average of flux was 88 LMH. EPS concentration tends not to change much above MLSS concentration (6,000 mg/L). However, EPS concentration variation is wide below MLSS concentration (6,000 mg/L). Also, from results of membrane surface condition and element analysis using SEM/EDX, carbon and fluorine were founded to be the highest percentage in membrane because of characteristics of membrane material. In operating continuously, inorganic fouling was generated by increase of these inorganic substances such as $Al^{3+}$ and $Mg^{2+}$. Lastly, the best filtration performance was obtained for 0.03 mg MFR/mg MLSS by results of particle size, zeta potential, $SCOD_{cr}$, EPS and MLSS concentration.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.8 no.6
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• pp.21-28
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• 2007

The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of hydraulic retention time (HRT) on removal efficiencies of organic matter, nitrogen and phosphorus in MBR-RO process for treating synthetic sewage. In MBR process, turbidity was less than average 2 NTU and average removal efficiency showed more than 99% during the operation period(MBR 105 day). As a result of HRT variation, average removal efficiencies of $COD_{Cr}$ on HRT 6, 12, 18 and 24hour were about 72.4, 84, 88.6 and 92.5%, respectively. The $NH_4{^+}-N$ removal efficiency was about 60.2 85.5, 91.3 and 92.2%, respectively. T-N and T-P removal efficiencies increased from 53.7 and 56.8 to 82.5 and 86.4%, respectively as the HRT increased from 6 hour to 24 hour. In RO process, average removal efficiencies of color and $COD_{Cr}$ in RO permeate were about 99.9% and 96.8%, respectively. Also, removal efficiencies of T-N, $NH_4{^+}-N$, $NO_3{^-}-N$ and T-P were all above average 90%.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.371-377
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• 2009

In this study, simultaneous nitrification and denitrification (SND) from synthetic wastewater were performed to evaluate dissolved oxygen(DO) effects on chemical oxygen demand(COD) and nitrogen removal in a single membarne bio-reactor(MBR). DO levels in MBR at Run 1, 2, and 3 were 1.9~2.2, 1.3~1.6, and 0.7~1.0 mg/L, respectively. Experimental results indicated that DO had an important factor to affect COD and total nitrogen(TN) removal. SND were able to be accomplished in the continuous-aeration MBR by controlling ambient DO concentration. It is postulated that, because of the oxygen diffusion limitation, an anoxic micro-zone was formed inside the flocs where the denitrification might occur. From the results of this study, 96% of COD could be removed at DO of 0.7mg/L. At run 2 72.92% of nitrogen was removed by the mechanisms of SND (7.75mg-TN/L in effluent). In this study, SND was successfully occurred in a MBR due to high MLSS that could help to form anoxic zone inside microbial floc at bulk DO concentrations of 1.3~1.6mg/L.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.131-140
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• 2002

Laboratory-scale membrane bioreactor added alum into the anaerobic basin as a flocculant and adsorbent was carried out to find removal efficient of nitrogen and phosphorus components in the mixed liquid and weather or not maintaining the stability for the permeate flux and pressure at various internal recycle conditions. It was found that denitrification efficient of maximum 65% was obtained when the ratio of internal recycle was 3Q. Additionally when the ratio of internal recycle was fixed at 3Q, $BOD_5$ and T-P concentration of permeate was much more reduced compared to not added alum in anaerobic basin but T-N concentration of permeate was relatively increased. In case of added alum as the flocculant and adsorbent in anaerobic basin, the permeate flux was maintained above $10{\ell}/m^2/hr$ but the permeate pressure was relatively higher than alum was not added in anaerobic basin.