• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.22 no.10
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• pp.1263-1271
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• 2013

Graphene oxide (GO)-titania composites have emerged as an attractive heterogeneous photocatalyst that can enhance the photocatalytic activity of $TiO_2$ nanoparticles owing to their potential interaction of electronic and adsorption natures. Accordingly, $TiO_2$-GO mixtures were synthesized in this study using a simple chemical mixing process, and their heterogeneous photocatalytic activities were investigated to determine the degradation of airborne organic pollutants (benzene, ethyl benzene, and o-xylene (BEX)) under different operational conditions. The Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy results demonstrated the presence of GO for the $TiO_2$-GO composites. The average efficiencies of the $TiO_2$-GO mixtures for the decomposition of each component of BEX determined during the 3-h photocatalytic processes were 26%, 92%, and 96%, respectively, whereas the average efficiencies of the unmodified $TiO_2$ powder were 3%, 8%, and 10%, respectively. Furthermore, the degradation efficiency of the unmodified $TiO_2$ powder for all target compounds decreased during the 3-h photocatalytic processes, suggesting a potential deactivation even during such a short time period. Two operational conditions (air flow entering into the air-cleaning devices and the indoor pollution levels) were found to be important factors for the photocatalytic decomposition of BEX molecules. Taken together, these results show that a $TiO_2$-GO mixture can be applied effectively for the purification of airborne organic pollutants when the operating conditions are optimized.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.221-230
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• 2017

To determine the effect of air pollution reduction policies, the long-term trend of air pollutants should be analyzed. Kolmogorov-Zurbenko (KZ) filter is a low-pass filter, produced through repeated iterations of a moving average to separate each variable into its temporal components. The moving average for a KZ(m, p) filter is calculated by a filter with window length m and p iterations. The output of the first pass subsequently becomes the input for the next pass. Adjusting the window length and the number of iterations makes it possible to control the filtering of different scales of motion. To break down the daily mean $PM_{10}$ into individual time components, we assume that the original time series comprises of a long-term trend, seasonal variation, and a short-term component. The short-term component is attributable to weather and short-term fluctuations in precursor emissions, while the seasonal component is a result of changes in the solar angle. The long-term trend results from changes in overall emissions, pollutant transport, climate, policy and/or economics. The long-term trend of the daily mean $PM_{10}$ decreased sharply from $59.6ug/m^3$ in 2002 to $44.6ug/m^3$ in 2015. This suggests that there was a long-term downward trend since 2005. The difference between the unadjusted and meteorologically adjusted long-term $PM_{10}$ is small. Therefore, we can conclude that $PM_{10}$ is unaffected by the meteorological variables (total insolation, daily mean temperature, daily mean relative humidity, daily mean wind speed, and daily mean local atmospheric pressure) in Busan.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.18 no.E4
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• pp.203-213
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• 2002

Receptor modeling is one of statistical methods to achieve reasonable air pollution strategies. In order to maintain and manage ambient air quality, it is necessary to identify sources and to apportion its sources for ambient particulate matters. The main purpose of the study was to survey seasonal trends of inorganic elements in the coarse and fine particles. Second, this study has attempted emission sources qualitatively by a receptor method, the PMF mo-del. After that. both PMF (positive matrix factorization) model and TTFA (target transformation factor analysis) model were applied to compare and to estimate mass contribution of coarse and fine particle sources at the receptor. A total of 138 sets of samples was collected from 1989 to 1996 by a low volume cascade impactor with 9 size fraction stages at Kyung Hee University in Korea. Sixteen chemical species (Si, Ca, Fe, K, Pb, Na, Zn, Mg, Ba, Ni, V, Mn, Cr, Br, Cu. Co) were characterized by XRF. The study result showed that the weighted arithmetic mean of coarse and fine particles were 51.3 and 54.4 $\mu\textrm{g}$/㎥, respectively. Contribution of both particle fractions were esti-mated using TTFA and PMF models. The number of estimated sources was seven according to TTFA model and 8 according to PMF model. Comparison of TTFA and PMF revealed that both methodologies exhibited similar trends in their contribution pattern. However, large differences between contributions were observed in some sour-ces. The results of this study may help to suggest control strategies in local countries where known source profiles do not exist.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.32 no.9
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• pp.857-861
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• 2010

Recently photochemical smog has become a serious urban air pollution. And VOC is the major pollutant for it. With the advance of industrialization and urbanization, MSWI fly ash and sewage sludge and melting slag were generated. It is necessary to de-toxificate ashes, because they contain many toxic constituents and probably lead to contaminate the environment. The objective of this research was to prepare multi-functional brick which is able to remove VOCs in ambient air. The bricks were made of MSWI fly ash, sewage sludge and slag. The benzene adsorption experiment by brick was acted to evaluate its adsorptivity. And also photocatalyst material was coated to enhance its adsorptivity and the endurance on the brick. According to the result, the benzene showed 74~96%. The removal efficiency was increased and the breakpoint time was lengthened by coating a brick.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics T
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• v.35T no.1
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• pp.67-74
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• 1998

The primary cause of air pollution by vehicles is imperfect combustion of fuel. One of the most usual causes of this imperfect combustion is the misfire in IC engins. The U.S. EPA(Environment Protection Agency) and the CARB(California air Resources Board) have imposed regulations for the detection of misfiring in automotive engines. The OBD-II regulations require that misfire should be monitored by the engine diagnostic system, and that the goal of OBD-II is to alert the driver to the presence of a malfunction of the emission control system. Several solutions to the misfire detection problem have been proposed for the detection of misfires. However, the performance of these methods in the presence of misfire is not altogether clear. This paper presents a precise method and system for internal combustion engine misfire. Present invention based upon measurements of engine roughness as derived from crankshaft angular velocity measurements with special signal processing method. Crankshaft angular velocity signals are processed by WDPT, so that the more reliable misfire detection than the time domain analysis. Experimental work confirms that it is possible to apply the WDFT for the detection of misfires in no-load idle and road testing.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.16 no.11
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• pp.1225-1230
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• 2007

The emissions characteristics of particulate matters(PM) according to the types of wastes from industrial waste incinerator of 800 kg/hr treatment capacity were investigated. For this study, the incinerate waste are as follows; waste resin, waste wood, waste urethane, waste gunny, and waste paper. The particulate samples were collected to be emitted in stack and air pollution control(both cyclone and bag filter). In stack, the concentrations of PM were in the range of 2.61 to $26.51 mg/Sm^3$ and the major chemical species were C, Si, Cl, K, Na, Ca in all the wastes. In cyclone fly ash, the mean content of heavy metal were in the order of Fe > Zn > Pb > Cu > Mn > Cr > Ni > Cd > As > Hg and the heavy metal content of waste resin were Zn 34,197.5 mg/kg, Fe 27,587.6 mg/kg, Pb 6,055.8 mg/kg, respectively. In bag filter fly ash, the mean content of heavy metal were in the order of Zn > Pb > Fe > Cu > Mn > Cd > Cr > Ni > As > Hg and the heavy metal content of waste wood were Pb 36,405.2 mg/kg, Fe 15,762.9 mg/kg, Cu 9,989.5 mg/kg, Cd 2,230.1 mg/kg, respectively. Comparing the heavy metal content of both cyclone and bag filter, in cyclone, the Cr, Fe, Ni content were higher than in bag filter and the Cd, Cu, Hg content were lower than in bag filter.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.11 no.12
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• pp.23-30
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• 2020

In this study, the relationship between natural gas (NG) data and gas-related environmental elements was performed using machine learning algorithms to predict the level of gas leakage risk without directly measuring gas leakage data. The study was based on open data provided by the server using the IoT-based remote control Picarro gas sensor specification. The naturel gas leaks into the air, it is a big problem for air pollution, environment and the health. The proposed method is multivariate outlier removing method based Random Forest (RF) classification for predicting risk of NG leak. After, unsupervised k-means clustering, the experimental dataset has done imbalanced data. Therefore, we focusing our proposed models can predict medium and high risk so best. In this case, we compared the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve, accuracy, area under the ROC curve (AUC), and mean standard error (MSE) for each classification model. As a result of our experiments, the evaluation measurements include accuracy, area under the ROC curve (AUC), and MSE; 99.71%, 99.57%, and 0.0016 for MOL_RF respectively.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.586-599
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• 2014

During the last two decades, indoor air quality and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) have been of concern in Korean society due to their nature of potential health impacts. In order to investigate the pollution levels of VOCss in indoor environments, establishment of a solid test method for monitoring the airborne VOCss is essential. In Korea, a method based on adsorbent sampling and GC analysis coupled with thermal desorption was proclaimed as the Korea Standard Method for Indoor Air Quality Test. This study was carried out to examine some inherent problems of the VOCs measurement method. The VOCs method does not describe in detail preparing the standard samples. The standard samples may be prepared by impregnation of either liquid standard solutions or a mixture of standard gases. In this study, we investigated the optimal temperature condition for transferring the liquid standards onto a standard adsorbent tube. As a result, keeping the impregnation temperature at $250^{\circ}C$ will be recommended in regard of the boiling points of multiple target analytes and the thermal stability of the adsorbent. We also demonstrated some problems associated with handling of a syringe used for transferring the standard solutions onto the adsorbent tubes, and a best way to get rid of the syringe problems was suggested. Finally, a number of field works were conducted to evaluate the performance of adsorbent sampling methods. Comparison of different adsorbent tubes, i.e. tube packed with single sorbent (Tenax) and double sorbents (Tenax with Carbotrap), revealed that 30 to 40% differences between the two groups, implying that sampling efficiency is depending on the volatility and the strength of adsorbents. However, duplicate precisions for VOCs sampling with a same type of adsorbent and at same flow rates appeared to be satisfactory to be all within 20%, which is a quality control guideline. Distributed volume precisions were also found to be within a guideline value, 25%, although the precision was in general inferior to the duplicate precision. The Korea indoor VOCs test method should be more refined and improved in many aspects, particularly procedure and instrumentation for preparing the standard samples and specification of quality control assessment.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.11 no.7
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• pp.2719-2726
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• 2010

The purpose of this study was to investigate the scientific basic grounds for the assessment of health and environmental diseases resulting from air pollutants in Pohang. For this study, we investigated pollutants, weather characteristics and concentration distribution of fine particles ($PM_10$) yearly and each season, using data from Air Quality Monitoring Stations. The properties of concentration distribution and seasonal fluctuation of $PM_10$ were studied qualitatively and quantitatively using CALPUFF, air dispersion model. The average concentration of $PM_10$ for each season was spring($75.7{\mu}g/m^3$)>summer($56.8{\mu}g/m^3$)>winter($53.6{\mu}g/m^3$)>fall( $52.7{\mu}g/m^3$). In the case of spring, high concentrations appear due to the Asian dust frequently occurring. The contributions of $PM_10$ classified by the types of pollution source in Pohang were point source 62%>mobile source 33%>area source 5%. An important point is that 97% of emissions were produced from the iron manufacture in steel industry. Therefore, it is necessary to control the emission sources of pollutants and to construct an observation system at Pohang steel industrial complex from now on. It’s time to control the risk factors for health and environmental disease to protect the health of resident in Pohang and its neighboring areas.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.55 no.6
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• pp.570-578
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• 2003

Background : Ambient particles during Asian dust events are usually sized less than $10{\mu}m$, known to be associated with the adverse effects on the general populations. But, there has been no considerable evidence linking these particles to the adverse effects on airways. The objectives of this study was to investigate the possible adverse effects of Asian dust events on respiratory function and symptoms in subjects with bronchial asthma. Patients and Methods : From march to June 2002, Asthmatic patients who were diagnosed with bronchial challenge test or bronchodilator response were enrolled. We divided them into three groups; mild, moderate, and severe, according to the severity. Subjects with other organ insufficiency such as heart, kidney, liver, and malignancy were excluded. All patients completed twice daily diaries and recorded peak flow rate, respiratory symptom, and daily activity. Daily and hourly mean pollutant levels of particulate matter < $10{\mu}m$ in diameter($PM_{10}$), nitrogen dioxide($NO_2$), sulphur dioxide($SO_2$), ozone($O_3$) and carbon monoxide(CO) were measured at the 10 different monitoring sites. Results : Dust events occured 14 times during the study period. Daily averages of 4 air pollutant were measured with an increased level of $PM_{10}$, decreased level of $NO_2$ and $SO_2$, and no change in CO during dust days compared to those during control days. An increase in $PM_{10}$ concentration was associated with an increase of subjects with PEF variability of >20% (p<0.05), night time symptom(p<0.05), and a decrease in mean PEF (p<0.05), which were calculated by the longitudinal data analysis. Otherwise, there was no association between $PM_{10}$ level and bronchodialtor inhaler, and daytime respiratory symptoms. Conclusion : This study shows evidence that ambient air pollution, especially $PM_{10}$, during Asian dust events, could be one of the many aggravating factors at least in patients with airway diseases. This data can be used as a primary source to set up a new policy on air environmental control and to evaluate the safety of air pollution index. We also expect that this research will help identify precise components of dust, which are more linked to the adverse effects.