• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.563-580
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• 2010

In 2009 the Korea Ministry of Environment announced 'A Comprehensive Plan for the Improvement of Sewer Service in Rural Area' aiming at reduction of the sewer service gap between urban and rural areas as well as improvement in the residential environment of the rural area. According to the plan, the sewer system supply rate for the rural area is expected to reach up to 75% until 2015 with the budget of 4.7 trillion won (Korean currency). It is not certain, however, that the increase in the sewer system supply rate will accompany improvement of water quality in receiving water because several veiled problems that can occur in small-scale sewer treatment plants are poorly addressed in the plan. In this study, those issues for the small-scale sewer treatment plants and their solutions were discussed based on a case study in which we investigated 19 treatment facilities at two rural regions in Gyeonggi province. This study also included strategies useful for the plan. From the results of investigation, some problems, e.g., high hourly variations but low in flowrates and low mass loading were commonly identified. Although operation parameters in sewer treatment plants require to be modified depending on the mass loading, most of the plants were operated with the initial design parameters which causes the decrease of removal efficiency. In the intensive diagnosis, we arranged and applied solutions (e.g., flow equalization, air on/off time control, etc) to the two selected plants and found out improvement of effluent water quality, especially organic matters (COD and SS) and T-N with better denitrification performance.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Environment and Ecology Conference
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.105-126
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• 2003

In Korea most of annual rainfall is concentrated in several episodic heavy rains during the season of summer monsoon and typhoon. Because of uneven rainfall distribution many dams have been constructed in order to secure water supply in dry seasons. The Han River system has the most dams among Korean rivers, and the river is a series of dams now. Reservoirs need different strategy of water quality control from river water. Autochthonous organic matter and phosphorus should be the major target to be controlled in lakes. In this Paper some problems are discussed that makes efforts of water quality improvement ineffective in lakes of Korea, even after the substantial investment to wastewater treatment facilities.1) Phosphorus is the key factor controlling eutrophication of lakes and the reduction ofphosphors should be the major target of water treatment. However, water quality management strategy in Korea is still stream-oriented, and focused on BOD removal from sewage. Phosphorus removal efficiency remains as low as 10-30%, because biological treatment is adopted for both secondary treatment and advanced treatment. The standard for TP concentration of the sewage treatment plant effluent is 6 mgP/l in most of regions, and 2 mg/l in enforced region near metropolitan water intake point. TP in the effluents of sewage treatment plants are usually 1-2 mg/1, and most of plants meet the effluent regulation without a further phosphorus removal process. The generous TP standard for effluents discourages further efforts to improve phosphorus removal efficiency of sewage treatment. Considering that TP standard for the effluent is below 0.1 mg/l in some countries, it should be amended to below 0.1 mg/l in Korea, especially in the watershed of large lakes.2) Urban runoff and combined sewer overflow are not treated, even though their total loading into lakes can be comparable to municipal sewage discharges on dry days. Chemical coagulation and rapid settling might be the solution to urban runoff in regard of intermittent operation on only rainy days.3) Aggregated precipitation in Korea that is concentrated on several episodic heavyrains per year causes a large amount of nonpoint source pollution loading into lakes. It makes the treatment of nonpoint source discharge by methods of other countries of even rain pattern, such as retention pond or artificial wetland, impractical in Korea.4) The application rate of fertilizers in Korea is ten times as high as the average ofOECD countries. The total manure discharge from animal farming is thought to be over the capacity of soil treatment in Korea. Even though large portion of manure is composted for organic fertilizer, a lot of nutrients and organic matter emanates from organic compost. The reduction of application rate and discharge rate of phosphorus from agricultural fields should be encouraged by incentives and regulations.5) There is a lot of vegetable fields with high slopes in the upstream region of the HanRiver. Soil erosion is severe due to high slopes, and fertilizer is discharged in the form of adsorbed phosphorus on clay surface. The reduction of soil erosion in the upland area should be the major preventive policy for eutrophication. Uplands of high slope must be recovered to forest, and eroded gullies should be reformed into grass-buffered natural streams which are wider and resistant to bank erosion.

• Ecology and Resilient Infrastructure
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.194-203
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• 2021

With the recent increase in maintenance works on water and sewer pipes as well as district heating supply pipes, pavement cutting work using pavement cutter is on the rise. The pavement cutting operation generates considerable dust (cutting sludge) as well as noise; therefore, it is necessary to apply eco-friendly technologies that have low noise and dust recovery capability. Thus far, various equipment for recovering dust have been developed; however, there is a limitation in that the environmental friendliness is not quantified. Therefore, in this study, we developed a low-noise, dust-recovery type pavement cutter that can fundamentally remove the causes of environmental hazards such as noise and dust and evaluated the eco-friendliness of the pavement cutting process performed by this cutter. To this end, an integrated water cooling-sludge recovery system composed of a vacuum device and a sludge suction unit was developed, and the developed system was applied to a pavement cutter. Subsequently, the developed equipment was applied to the test bed, and data related to its eco-friendliness were collected and evaluated. The results showed that the cutting sludge recovery rate of the developed equipment was greater than 83%, the noise level was approximately 82 - 83 dB, and the sound power level was 115 dB. The results of this study will be used as basic data to develop improved pavement cutters in the future with improved cutting sludge recovery performance and lower noise.