• Membrane Journal
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.24-44
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• 2013

The MBR technology has evolved rapidly over the past two decades with significant gains in performance and reliability, and reductions in costs. Membrane bioreactors (MBR) technology is widely recognised as offering a key option for enhanced wastewater treatment or reuse. The objective of this paper is then to critically review the remarkable achievement on the research and commercial applications of membrane bioreactor (MBR) technology and to present current and potential MBR markets on a global scope. This brief review of the technology incorporates five key aspects : 1) evolution of MBR practice, 2) the commercial technologies of MBRs, 3) the largest MBR installations globally (e.g. > $10,000m^3/day$), 4) MBR market growth, and 5) directions for future research. Finally, the development directions of economical, environmental and technical aspects in MBRs; 1) investment costs; 2) effluent water quality; 3) membrane materials and modules; 4) MBR equipment and treatment process; 5) operating costs (higher energy & chemical consumption); and 6) sustainability such as anaerobic MBRs in the coming years were addressed.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.31 no.10
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• pp.1455-1464
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• 2021

Trehalose is a non-reducing disaccharide in increasing demand for applications in food, nutraceutical, and pharmaceutical industries. Single-step trehalose production by trehalose synthase (TreS) using maltose as a starting material is a promising alternative process for industrial application due to its simplicity and cost advantage. Pseudomonas monteilii TBRC 1196 was identified using the developed screening method as a potent strain for TreS production. The TreS gene from P. monteilii TBRC 1196 was first cloned and expressed in Escherichia coli. Purified recombinant trehalose synthase (PmTreS) had a molecular weight of 76 kDa and showed optimal pH and temperature at 9.0 and 40℃, respectively. The enzyme exhibited >90% residual activity under mesophilic condition under a broad pH range of 7-10 for 6 h. Maximum trehalose yield by PmTreS was 68.1% with low yield of glucose (4%) as a byproduct under optimal conditions, equivalent to productivity of 4.5 g/l/h using enzyme loading of 2 mg/g substrate and high concentration maltose solution (100 g/l) in a lab-scale bioreactor. The enzyme represents a potent biocatalyst for energy-saving trehalose production with potential for inhibiting microbial contamination by alkaline condition.

• Journal of the Korea Organic Resources Recycling Association
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.19-38
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• 2023

Nitrous oxide, one of the six greenhouse gases from Kyoto protocol, is known to be emitted in biological nitrification and denitrification reactions at wastewater treatment plant. In this study, EQPS which is a computer program that can simulate nitrous oxide gas emission amount at wastewater treatment plants is used. The MLE process which treats wastewater from combined sewer is studied. Operational variables which are MLR, water temperature at reactor and primary clarifier by-pass percentage are changed to define the condition which produces the least amount of nitrous oxide gas. 200 % of MLR, 20 ℃ of water temperature at bioreactor and 15 % of primary clarifier by-pass percentage are shown the least nitrous oxide emission factor. Also, it is found that the deep aeration tank produces less amount of nitrous oxide gas since less air is required to meet oxygen demand in this type of aeration tank.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.141-148
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• 2017

The oxidation ditch (OD) is one of the most widely used processes for treating municipal wastewater. However, the microbial communities in the OD systems have not been well characterized, and little information about the shift of bacterial community during the startup process of the OD systems is available. In this study, we investigated the bacterial community changes during the startup period (over 100 days) of a full-scale OD. The results showed that the bacterial community dramatically changed during the startup period. Similar to the activated sludge samples in other studies, Proteobacteria (accounting for 26.3%-48.4%) was the most dominant bacterial phylum in the OD system, but its relative abundance declined nearly 40% during the startup process. It was also found that Planctomycetes proliferated greatly (from 4.79% to 13.5%) and finally replaced Bacteroidetes as the second abundant phylum in the OD system. Specifically, some bacteria affiliated with genus Flavobacterium exhibited remarkable decreasing trends, whereas bacterial species belonging to the OD1 candidate division and Saprospiraceae family were found to increase during the startup process. Despite of the bacterial community shift, the organic matter, nitrogen, and phosphorus in the effluent were always in low concentrations, suggesting the functional redundancy of the bacterial community. Moreover, by comparing with the bacterial community in other municipal wastewater treatment bioreactors, some potentially novel bacterial species were found to be present in the OD system. Collectively, this study improved our understandings of the bacterial community structure and microbial ecology during the startup of a full-scale wastewater treatment bioreactor.

• 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.

• Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.10 no.5
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• pp.213-226
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• 2005

To treat wastewater efficiently by a one-step process of nitrogen removal, a new bacterial strain producing $N_2$ gas from ${NH_4}^+$ under an aerobic condition was isolated and identified. The cell was motile and a Gram-negative rod, and usually occurred in pairs. By 16S-rDNA analysis, the isolated strain was identified as Enterobacter asburiae with 96% similarity. The isolate showed that the capacity of $N_2$ production under an oxic condition was approximately three times higher than that under an anoxic condition. Thus, the consumption of ${NH_4}^+$ by the isolate was significantly different in the metabolism of $N_2$ production under the two different environmental conditions. The optimal conditions of the immobilized isolate for $N_2$ production were found to be pH 7.0, $30^{\circ}C$ and C/N ratio 5, respectively. Under all the optimum reaction conditions, $N_2$ production by the immobilized isolate resulted in reduction of ORP with both the consumption of DO and the drop of pH. The removal efficiencies of $COD_{Cr}$, and TN were 56.1 and 60.9%, respectively. The removal rates of $COD_{Cr}$, and TN were the highest for the first 2.5 hrs with the removal $COD_{Cr}/TN$ ratios of 32.1, and afterwards the rates decreased as reaction proceeded. For application of the immobilized isolate to a practical process of ammonium removal, a continuous operation was executed with a synthetic medium of a low C/N ratio. The continuous bioreactor system exhibited a satisfactory performance at 12.1 hrs of HRT, in which the effluent concentrations of ${NH_4}^+$-N was measured to be 15.4 mg/L with its removal efficiency of 56.0%. The maximum removal rate of ${NH_4}^+$-N reached 1.6 mg ${NH_4}^+$-N/L/hr at 12.1 hrs of HRT(with N loading rate of $0.08\;Kg-N/m^3$-carrier/d). As a result, the application of the immobilized isolate appears a viable alternative to the nitrification-denitrification processes.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.38 no.6
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• pp.323-328
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• 2016

Pressurized membrane used for side-stream MBR process requires fouling control strategy both for normal and abnormal operation conditions for stable operation of the facilities. In this study, $85m^3/day$ of pilot-scale side-stream MBR process was constructed for the evaluation of fouling mitigation by air bubble injection into the membrane module. In addition, fouling phenomena at abnormal operation conditions of low influent and/or loading rate were also investigated. Injection of air bubble was found to be effective in delaying transmembrane pressure (TMP) increase mainly due to scouring effect on the membrane surface, resulting in expanded filtration cycle at a high flux of $40L/m^2{\cdot}h$ (LMH). At abnormal operation condition, injection of PACl (53 mg/L as Al) into the bioreactor showed 19% reduction of TMP increase. However, inhibition of nitrifying bacteria by continuous PACl injection was observed from batch experiments. In contrast, injection of powdered activated carbon (PAC, 0.6 g/L) was able to maintain the initial TMP of $0.2kg/cm^2$ for 5 days at the abnormal conditions. It may have been caused from the adsorption of extracellular polymeric substances (EPS), which was known to be excessively released during growth inhibition condition and act as the major foulants in MBR operations.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Environmental Technology
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.550-555
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• 2018

International Maritime Organization (IMO) is one of the most effective organizations in evolving international law for the protection and conservation of the marine environment. The IMO, MARPOL(Marine Pollution) 73/78 contains six Annexes that provide an overarching framework for the objectives of the international marine pollution. Annex IV was regulated by 64 th resolution in 2012 to control sea pollution from sewage. In 2014 large-scale wastewater treatment and nutrient removal device was developed with a grant from the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries. A combined new process of Sequence Batch Reactor (SBR) and Membrane Bioreactor(MBR) was developed to overcome the pollution caused by shipboard sewage. In the present study, shipboard sewage wastewater was treated by mixing and aeration cycle in the newly developed SBR process. Furthermore, during analysis by NGS technique(Macrogen Co., Ltd.), dominant species of bacteria were found in the aeration tank of the Bench-scale wastewater treatment facility. Bacteroidetes and Gammaproteobacteria accounted for 27.1 % of the aerobicbacteria and 16.8 % of the anaerobicbacteria, respectively. Microorganisms play a vital role in shipboard wastewater treatment. A further detailed study is required to understand the precise role of the microorganisms in the wastewater treatment.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.31 no.12
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• pp.1113-1122
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• 2009

In order to find the way to solve the problem of sewage sludge discharge into the ocean, the sludge solubilization by ultrasonic and the improvement methods of wastewater treatment process were studied. In the membrane bioreactor the sludge retention time was stepwise increased from 5.1 day to 442 days where the biomass average concentration has been increased from $c_B$=3.4 $gTSSL^{-1}$ to $c_B$=14.5 $gTSSL^{-1}$ respectively. At the same time, the biomass yield coefficients were reduced from 0.5-0.7 at SRT=5.1 day to 0.005-0.007 at SRT=442 days which means the reduction of sludge production. Oxygen mass transfer coefficients and ${\alpha}$-factor were investigated with changing stirrer speed to find the relation between the high biomass concentration and aeration efficiency in the propeller loop reactor. As a result of sludge solubilization, the solubilization of sludge by ultrasound was increased with increasing energy input and it led to improved anaerobic digestion rate with more biogas production than that of nonsolubilized sewage sludge.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.457-462
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• 2002

Low Electromagnetic Field (EMF) intensity in the range of $1{\mu}T\;to\;10{\mu}T$(Tesla) was found to enhance the growth of CHO cells and the production of tPA in batch and perfusion cultivations. At $1{\mu}T\;intensity,\;1.3{\times}10^7$ viable cells/ml of maximum cell density and 80 mg/l of maximum tPA production were obtained in batch cultivation, compared to $2.8{\times}10^6$ viable cells/ml and 59 mg tPA/1 in unexposed case (control). A similar trend was observed in the perfusion process, where it was possible to obtain $1.2{\times}10^7$ viable cells/ml of maximum cell density and 81 mg tPA/l of maximum tPA production by more than 80 days of cultivation. However, there was not much difference between $1{\mu}T\;and\;10{\mu}T$ in perfusion cultivation, possibly due to better environmental growth conditions being maintained by continuous feeding of fresh medium into the reactor. On the contrary, both cell growth and tPA production were severely inhibited at higher than 1 mT intensity, showing no growth at 10 mT exposure. Specific growth rate was linearly correlated to specific tPA production rate at $1{\mu}T$EMF intensity, which represents a partially growth-related relationship. It was also found that a large amount of $Ca^2+$ was released at low EMF intensity, even though the cell growth was not much affected. Low EMF intensity significantly improved both cell growth and tPA production, and tPA production seemed to be more affected than the cell growth, possibly due to the changes of cell membrane characteristics. It can be concluded that the elaboration of EMF intensity less than $10{\mu}T$ could improve cell growth and tPA production, but mainly tPA secretion through batch or perfusion process in a bioreactor.