• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
• /
• v.16 no.6
• /
• pp.393-405
• /
• 2007

To examine the sedimentary geochemical characteristics of sediment in the Tamjin River and Doam bay, the analysis was conducted, using the sample obtained in February 2000, on the grain size and the contents of metallic elements and organic carbon. The factors that influence the geochemical behavior of metallic elements in the surface sediment are grain size, organism, surrounding soil and $CaCO_3$. To find out the pollution level of metallic elements, the enrichment factor (EF) and the index of geoaccumulation ($I_{geo}$) were researched. The majority of metallic elements sustain their values in natural state. The elements such as K, Ba, Zr, etc. appear to be rich in some places. The EF and $I_{geo}$ of P, Cu, Zn, and Pb, which belong to toxic heavy metals, are partly related with man-made pollution. P and Cu have a high EF, Pb has a high $I_{geo}$ and Zn is high in both EF and $I_{geo}$. The low contents of P and Cu are not likely to be related with the pollution of water environment. However, given the development of relative pollution, the research and the management regarding the pollutants are needed. Because Pb, naturally enriched by geological characteristics, has a large influence on water environment along with Zn, the adequate measures against man-made pollution should be worked out.

• Journal of Life Science
• /
• v.18 no.6
• /
• pp.839-844
• /
• 2008

A strain SH-517 which produce extracellular keratinase, was isolated from the soil of a poultry waste and a poultry factory. An isolate SH-517 was identified as Bacillus sp. based on its morphological and biochemical characteristics. The optimal culture conditions for the production of keratinase by Bacillus sp. SH-517 were investigated. The optimal medium composition for keratinase production was determined to be 2.0% chicken feather as carbon source, 0.5% beef extract as organic nitrogen source, 0.5% $KNO_3$ as inorganic nitrogen source and 0.06% KCl, 0.05% NaCl, 0.04% $KH_2PO_4$, 0.03% $K_2HPO_4$ as mineral source and 0.01% yeast extract as growth factor. The optimal temperature and pH of medium were shown $40^{\circ}C$ and 8.5 with shaking culture (180 rpm/min), respectively. The maximum keratinase production reached maximum of 125 units/ml/min after 42 hr of cultivation under the optimal culturing conditions.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
• /
• v.39 no.1
• /
• pp.58-64
• /
• 2020

BACKGROUND: Most of the researches on the dye removal using ozonation have been focused on the removal efficiency. However, the research on their removal characteristics and mechanism according to the reaction time has been still insufficient. METHODS AND RESULTS: In this study, the effects of initial pH and dye concentration with reaction time on the degradation characteristics of methyl orange (MO) and methylene blue (MB) by ozonation were evaluated. The degradation efficiency of MB by ozonation increased with increasing pH. On the other hand, the degradation efficiency of MO by ozonation did not show a significant difference with varing pH. The both MO and MB by ozonation were decomposed within 30 min irrespective of the dye concentration, but the decomposition rates of dyes were faster at lower initial dye concentration. The decomposition efficiency of total organic carbon (TOC) in each dye solution by ozonation was low, which was found to be effective for partial decomposition such as decolorization rather than complete degradation of the dye. CONCLUSION: Overall, ozonation was an effective method for removing nondegradable dyes. However, it is necessary to study the optimization of dye degradation under various environmental conditions for ozonation.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
• /
• v.39 no.3
• /
• pp.171-177
• /
• 2020

BACKGROUND: Recently, biomass conversion from agricultural wastes to carbon-rich materials such as biochar has been recognized as a promising option to maintain or increase soil productivity, reduce nutrient losses, and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions from the agro-ecosystem. This experiment was conducted to select an optimum conditions for enhancing the NH₄-N adsorption capacity of rice hull activated biochar. METHODS AND RESULTS: For deciding the proper molarity of KOH for enhancing its porosity, biochars treated with different molarity of KOH (0, 1, 2, 4, 6, 8) were carbonized at 600℃ in the reactor. The maximum adsorption capacity was 1.464 mg g^-1, and an optimum molarity was selected to be 6 M KOH. For the effect of adsorption capacity to different carbonized temperatures, 6 M KOH-treated biochar was carbonized at 600℃ and 800℃ under the pyrolysis system. The result has shown that the maximum adsorption capacity was 1.76 mg g^-1 in the rice hull activated biochar treated with 6 M KOH at 600℃ of pyrolysis temperature, while its non-treated biochar was 1.17 mg g^-1. The adsorption rate in the rice hull activated biochar treated with 6 M KOH at 600℃ was increased at 62.18% compared to that of the control. Adsorption of NH₄-N in the rice hull activated biochar was well suited for the Langmuir model because it was observed that dimensionless constant (R_L) was 0.97 and 0.66 at 600℃ and 800℃ of pyrolysis temperatures, respectively. The maximum adsorption amount (q_m) and the bond strength constants (b) were 0.092 mg g^-1 and 0.001 mg L^-1, respectively, for the rice hull activated biochar treated with 6 M KOH at 600℃ of pyrolysis. CONCLUSION: Optimum condition of rice hull activated biochar was 6M KOH at 600℃ of pyrolysis temperature.

• Applied Biological Chemistry
• /
• v.35 no.5
• /
• pp.375-381
• /
• 1992

An exoinulase-producing bacterium was isolated from soil, and identified as Streptomyces sp. The maximum inulase production was achieved when inulin as carbon source and soybean meal as organic nitrogen source were included in the culture. The exoinulase was considered to be a constitutive enzyme produced not only by inulin but also by soluble starch or glucose. The purified enzyme on DEAE-cellulose and Sephadex G-200 column showed the maximal activity at $pH\;5.5{\sim}6.0$ and $50^{\circ}C$, but lost 65% inulase activity at $50^{\circ}C$ after 1 hour incubation. This exoinulase was activated by $Mn^{+2}$, wherease more that 80% inactivation was observed with $Ag^+$, $Hg^{+2}$ and $Fe^{+3}$. The enzyme was possibly a metalloenzyme in that EDTA and 8-hydroxyquinoline inhibited the enzyme. Km values for inulin (16.51 mM) and sucrose (14.62 mM) were in very close range suggesting mostly equal affinity toward the subatrates. However, the maximum velocity for inulin was 10 times greater than for sucrose.

• Korean Journal of Microbiology
• /
• v.33 no.4
• /
• pp.267-273
• /
• 1997

Various physico-chemical and microbiological parameters of a composting system were compared with respect to their potential use for the monitoring and evaluation of composting processes for cattle manure. The temperature changed within a range of $30-65^{\circ}C$ during the whole composting process, and the period of active composting (>$40^{\circ}C$) persisted for 16 days. The concentrations of total carbon, total nitrogen, and organic matter decreased by 15% during active composting, but significant changes in C/N ratio were not observed. The decrease of temperature in the latter period of active composting caused a decrease of $NH_4^+-N$ and an increase of $NO_3^--N$ in the composting pile. When temperature exceeded $50^{\circ}C$, the population of thermophiles was higher than that of mesophiles by more than 1 or 2 orders of magnitude. Correlation analyses showed that amylase activity correlated positively with the population of mesophiles and reducing sugar content, but negatively with the population of thermophiles. Amylase activity was higher at the beginning of active composting, whereas cellulase, xylanase and ligninase activities which showed close relationship with each other, increased continually during active cornposting, suggesting the distinction of temporal niches between amylose-degrading and lignocellulose-degrading bacteria in the same habitat.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
• /
• v.58 no.3
• /
• pp.325-345
• /
• 2020

Determination of Best available technology (BAT) was suggested to reduce volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in a petrochemical industrial complex, by conducting human health risk, environmental, and economic assessment based on multimedia fugacity model. Fate and distribution of benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene (BTEX) was predicted by the multimedia fugacity model, which represent VOCs emitted from the industrial complex in U-city. Media-integrated human health risk assessment and sensitivity analysis were conducted to predict the human health risk of BTEX and identify the critical variable which has adverse effects on human health. Besides, the environmental and economic assessment was conducted to determine the BAT for VOCs reduction. It is concluded that BTEX highly remained in soil media (60%, 61%, 64% and 63%), and xylene has remained as the highest proportion of BTEX in each environment media. From the candidates of BAT, the absorption was excluded due to its high human health risk. Moreover, it is identified that the half-life and exposure coefficient of each exposure route are highly correlated with human health risk by sensitivity analysis. In last, considering environmental and economic assessment, the regenerative thermal oxidation, the regenerative catalytic oxidation, the bio-filtration, the UV oxidation, and the activated carbon adsorption were determined as BAT for reducing VOCs in the petrochemical industrial complex. The suggested BAT determination methodology based on the media-integrated approach can contribute to the application of BAT into the workplace to efficiently manage the discharge facilities and operate an integrated environmental management system.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
• /
• v.38 no.5 s.174
• /
• pp.547-561
• /
• 2005

General characteristics of groundwater contamination by As were reviewed with several recent researches, and its occurrence in groundwater of Korea was investigated based on a ffw previous studies and a groundwater quality survey in Nonsan and Geumsan areas. In Bangladesh, which has been known as the most serious arsenic calamity country, about $28\%$ of the shallow groundwaters exceeded the Bangladesh drinking water standard, $50{\mu}g/L$, and it was estimated that about 28 million people were exposed to concentrations greater than the standard. Groundwater was characterized by circum-neutral pH with a moderate to strong reducing conditions. Low concentrations of $SO_4^{2-}$ and $NO_3^-$, and high contents of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and $NH_4^+$ were typical chemical characteristics. Total As concentrations were enriched in the Holocene alluvial aquifers with a dominance of As(III) species. It was generally agreed that reductive dissolution of Fe oxyhydroxides was the main mechanism for the release of As into groundwater coupling with the presence of organic matters and microbial activities as principal factors. A new model has also been suggested to explain how arsenic can naturally contaminate groundwaters far from the ultimate source with transport of As by active tectonic uplift and glaciatiion during Pleistocene, chemical weathering and deposition, and microbial reaction processes. In Korea, it has not been reported to be so serious As contamination, and from the national groundwater quality monitoring survey, only about $1\%$ of grounwaters have concentrations higher than $10{\mu}g/:L.$ However, it was revealed that $19.3\%$ of mineral waters, and $7\%$ of tube-well waters from Nonsan and Geumsan areas contained As concentrations above $10{\mu}g/:L.$. Also, percentages exceeding this value during detailed groundwater quality surveys were $36\%\;and\;22\%$ from Jeonnam and Ulsan areas, respectively, indicating As enrichment possibly by geological factors and local mineralization. Further systematic researches need to proceed in areas potential to As contamination such as mineralized, metasedimentary rock-based, alluvial, and acid sulfate soil areas. Prior to that, it is required to understand various geochemical and microbial processes, and groundwater flow characteristics affecting the behavior of As.

• Journal of Wetlands Research
• /
• v.25 no.4
• /
• pp.306-314
• /
• 2023

Stream sediments are an important component of water quality management because they are receptors of various pollutants such as heavy metals and organic matters emitted from upland sources and can be secondary pollution sources, adversely affecting water environment. To effectively manage the stream sediments, identification of primary sources of sediment contamination and source-associated control strategies will be required. We evaluated the performance of machine learning models in identifying primary sources of sediment contamination based on the physico-chemical properties of stream sediments. A total of 356 stream sediment data sets of 18 quality parameters including 10 heavy metal species(Cd, Cu, Pb, Ni, As, Zn, Cr, Hg, Li, and Al), 3 soil parameters(clay, silt, and sand fractions), and 5 water quality parameters(water content, loss on ignition, total organic carbon, total nitrogen, and total phosphorous) were collected near abandoned metal mines and industrial complexes across the four major river basins in Korea. Two machine learning algorithms, linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and support vector machine (SVM) classifiers were used to classify the sediments into four cases of different combinations of the sampling period and locations (i.e., mine in dry season, mine in wet season, industrial complex in dry season, and　industrial complex in wet season). Both models showed good performance in the classification, with SVM outperformed LDA; the accuracy values of LDA and SVM were 79.5% and 88.1%, respectively. An SVM ensemble model was used for multi-label classification of the multiple contamination sources inlcuding landuses in the upland areas within 1 km radius from the sampling sites. The results showed that the multi-label classifier was comparable performance with sinlgle-label SVM in classifying mines and industrial complexes, but was less accurate in classifying dominant land uses (50~60%). The poor performance of the multi-label SVM is likely due to the overfitting caused by small data sets compared to the complexity of the model. A larger data set might increase the performance of the machine learning models in identifying contamination sources.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
• /
• v.40 no.4
• /
• pp.403-418
• /
• 2007

The objective of this research was to characterize the fate and transport of Cr(VI) contaminated groundwater in the Daejeon industrial area. Five subsidiary monitoring wells were newly installed and two existing wells were utilized for the investigation and the reduction process of Cr(VI) contaminated groundwater of the Daejeon(Mun-pyeong) national groundwater monitoring station. The Cr(VI) concentrations at the shallow aquifer well of the station were in the range of 3.2-4.5 mg/L indicating continuous contamination. However, Cr was not detected at the deep bedrock well and the other monitoring wells except MPH-1 and 3. The Cr(VI) concentrations of MPH-1 and MPH-3 were below the drinking water guideline value (0.05 mg/L). Therefore, the plume of the Cr(VI) contaminated groundwater was predicted to be confined within the narrow boundary around the station. The soluble/exchangeable Cr(VI) concentrations were below the detection limit in all core and slime samples taken from the five newly installed wells. Although the exact source of contamination was not directly detected in the study area, the spatial Cr(VI) distribution in groundwater and characteristics of the core samples indicated that the source and the dispersion range were confined within the 100 m area from the monitoring station. The contamination might be induced from the unlined landfill of industrial wastes which was observed during the installation of an subsidiary monitoring well. For the evaluation of the natural attenuation of Cr(VI), available reduction capacities of Cr(VI) with an initial concentration of 5 mg/L were measured in soil and aquifer materials. Dark-gray clay layer samples have high capacities of Cr(VI) reduction ranging from 58 to 64%, which is obviously related to organic carbon contents of the samples. The analysis of reduction capacities implied that the soil and aquifer materials controlled the dispersion of Cr(VI) contamination in this area. However, some possibilities of dispersion by the preferential flow cannot be excluded due to the limited numbers of monitoring wells. We suggest the removal of Cr(VI) contaminated groundwater by periodical pumping, and the continuous groundwater quality monitoring for evaluation of the Cr(VI) dispersion should be followed in the study area.