• Advances in environmental research
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.1-15
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• 2023

Wastewater of anthropogenic origin is known to harbor various bacteria that are known to be of potential risk to human health and environment. It is of utmost importance to monitor such water sources. Coliforms present in the sewage water samples of municipal sewage treatment plants located at three different places in the South Gujarat region (Surat, Navsari and Vapi) of India were analyzed for their coliforms load as well as tested for their drug resistance. Using cultivation-based techniques microbial load and drug resistance (Amoxicillin, Tetracycline, Ciprofloxacin, Erythromycin, Trimethoprim and Sulphamethoxazole) were analyzed. Water treatment statistically significantly decreased the bacterial load in Vapi and Navsari samples. The optical density of with and without antibiotics of all the three locations was shown to increase significantly after 72 hours. Of all the isolates tested, except isolate 'VA5' (resisted up to 90 ㎍ of Ampicillin) all other isolates resisted 256 ㎍ concentration of antibiotics tested. This study indicates that the sewage water is being contaminated with drugs and/or antibiotics due to industrial and/or anthropogenic activities. Regular monitoring of the water quality is required followed by implementation of environmental laws for reducing the pollutants, that are of human health and environment concern.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.225-230
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• 2008

Objective of this study was to access the environmental impacts of the use of discharge water from municipal waste water treatment plant as alternative irrigation resources during drought season for rice cultivation. For the field experiments, it was observed that plant growth and yield characteristics at 20 days of alternative irrigation period with application of FAST (fertilizer application based on soil test) 50% were relatively the same as the control. For the surface water quality, it appeared that $EC_i$ (electrical conductivity of irrigation water) and SAR (sodium adsorption ratio) values of DMWT (discharge waters from municipal wastewater treatment plant) irrigation were twofold higher than those of ground water irrigation as the control regardless of fertilization levels. For the irrigation periods, there were not significantly difference between 10 and 20 days of treatments, but $EC_i$ and SAR values of surface water were highest at 30 days of irrigation periods at initial rice growing stages. Generally, $EC_i$ values of percolation water in all the treatments were gradually increasing until 30days after irrigation, and then decreasing to harvest stage. Overall, it might be considered that there was possibility to irrigate DMWT with application of FAST 50% for 20 days of drought periods at rice transplanting season. Furthermore, efficiency rate of alternative irrigation water for 20 days of drought period was 32.7% relative to the total annual irrigation water for rice cultivation.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.521-526
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• 2006

A membrane bioreactor (MBR) is an effective tool for wastewater treatment with recycling. MBR process has several advantages over conventional activated sludge process (ASP); reliability, compactness, and quality of treated water. The resulting high-quality and disinfected effluents suggest that MBR process can be suitable for the reused and recycling of wastewater. An anoxic/oxic (A/O) type MBR was applied to simultaneous removal of organics and nutrients in sewage. At first, the efficiency of submerged MBR process was investigated using a hollow fiber microfiltration membrane with a constant flux of $10.2L/m^2{\cdot}h$ at each solids retention time (SRT). Results showed that protein/carbohydrate (P/C) ratio increased and total extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) remained constant with SRT increased. Secondly, A/O type MBR with a reverse osmosis (RO) membrane was employed to treat the municipal wastewater. The performance of A/O type MBR-RO process is better for the treatment of organics and nutrients than ASP-MF-RO process in terms of consistent effluents quality.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.796-803
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• 2012

Potential feasibility of nutrients removal and biofuel production with microalgae was evaluated in batch culture. Distribution of microalgae in fresh water including reservoir and river was investigated to search for the species with high content of lipid that could converted into biofuel. Green algae, Chlorella and Scenedesmus sp., these are known as species containing high lipid content for biodiesel production, were observed in both summer and autumn season. However another highly lipid-containing species, botryococcus sp. was not observed in this study. In mixed culture of microalgae using synthesized wastewater medium, green algae were found to be dominant, comparing to other species of diatoms and blue-green algae. And microalgae were also capable of removing nitrogen and phosphorus in batch experiments. During the culture period of 14 days, removal efficiencies of nitrate and phosphorus were 30% and 82%, respectively. Furthermore, content of the intracellular lipid extracted from algae cell was as favorable as 12-30% in the mixed culture where Scenedesmus and Chlorella sp. were dominant. Therefore the mixed culture of microalgae could be applied to biofuel production and tertiary wastewater treatment, even though there are economic barriers to overcome.

• Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.28-35
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• 2018

$17{\alpha}-ethinylestradiol$ (EE2), a synthetic estrogen which interfere the endocrine and reproductive function in living organisms, has been found extensively to be deposited into municipal wastewater treatment plants and the environment via human excretion. EE2 has long been known to be efficiently cometabolized by ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) during ammonia ($NH_3$) oxidation. Current study aims to investigate the effect of culture history on the biotransformation of EE2 by nitrifying sludge which was enriched under different ammonia loading rates in continuous flow reactors. Result showed that past growth condition largely affected not only the metabolic rate of $NH_3$ oxidation but also EE2 cometabolism. Sludge previously acclimated with higher $NH_3$ loads as well as sludge dominated with AOB belong to high growth cluster (Nitrosomonas europaea-Nitrosococcus mobilis) showed higher rate of EE2 biotransformation than those one being acclimated with lower $NH_3$ loads because of its ability to provide more reducing power from $NH_3$ oxidation. Moreover, the correlation between the degradation rates of $NH_3$ and EE2 was higher in sludge being acclimated with higher load of $NH_3$ in comparison with other sludge. Implication of the findings emphasized the role of volumetric $NH_3$ loading rate in determining EE2 removal in wastewater treatment system.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.91-98
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• 2008

This work was performed to develop a model possible to predict the influent flow and influent components, which are one of main disturbances causing process problems at the operation of municipal wastewater treatment plant. In this study, artificial neural network (ANN) was used in order to develop a model that was able to predict the influent flow, $COD_{Mn}$, SS, TN 1 day-ahead, 2day-ahead and 3 day ahead. Multi-layer feed-forward back-propagation network was chosen as neural network type, and tanh-sigmoid function was used as activation function to transport signal at the neural network. And Levenberg-Marquart (LM) algorithm was used as learning algorithm to train neural network. Among 420 data sets except missing data, which were collected between 2005 and 2006 at field plant, 210 data sets were used for training, and other 210 data sets were used for validation. As result of it, ANN model for predicting the influent flow and components 1-3day ahead could be developed successfully. It is expected that this developed model can be practically used as follows: Detecting the fault related to effluent concentration that can be happened in the future by combining with other models to predict process performance in advance, and minimization of the process fault through the establishment of various control strategies based on the detection result.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.255-262
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• 2018

This study attempted to evaluate the process of self-forming dynamic membrane formation on mesh filter in membrane bioreactor with a two-stage method of batch (agitation) and continues (aeration) stage at different sludge concentrations. Four concentrations of activated sludge including $6{\pm}0.4$, $8{\pm}0.5$, $10{\pm}0.3$, $14{\pm}0.3g/L$ were used to demonstrate the optimal concentration of sludge for treating municipal wastewater and reducing fouling in dynamic membrane bioreactor. The formation time and effluent turbidity were decreased in the batch stage when increasing the activated sludge concentration. The minimum values of formation time and effluent turbidity were 14 min and 43 NTU for the optimum mixed liqueur suspended solids of $8{\pm}0.5g/L$, respectively. To improve operational condition and fouling reduction in the aeration stage, critical fluxes were measured for all concentrations by flux-step method. With increasing the sludge concentration, the relevant critical fluxes reduced. The optimum subcritical flux of $30L/m^2/h$ was applied as operating flux in the second stage. The maximum COD removal efficiency of 98% was achieved by the concentration of $8{\pm}0.5g/L$. Compressibility index of self-forming dynamic membrane and transmembrane pressure trend remained somewhat constant until the optimal concentration of $8{\pm}0.5g/L$ and thereafter they increased steeply.

• Journal of Wetlands Research
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.414-420
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• 2015

Nitrogen is one of main causes to induce eutrophication of water system and one of contaminants that must be treated for protection of water system. In this study, it was intended to identify a method to increase operation efficiency of municipal wastewater treatment plant (MWTP) by treating high concentration nitrogen. A laboratory scale reactor was operated by using sludge thickener supernatant in the MWTP. During operation of the laboratory scale reactor, it was intended to induce stable nitritation and analyze effects of related operation factors. As results, it was shown that the nitiritation could be induced artificially through control of retention time and sections where the stable nitiritation was induced were identified also. In particular, highly efficient nitrite conversion efficiency near 90% was identified in condition of 1 day retention time. Especially, it was shown that ammonium nitrogen load affected ammonium nitrogen removal efficiency and nitrite conversion efficiency. In the condition of high ammonium nitrogen load, the nitrite conversion efficiency and the ammonium nitrogen removal efficiency decreased. On the contrary in the condition of low ammonium nitrogen load, it was found that the nitrite conversion efficiency decreased. It means that control of ammonium nitrogen concentration and its retention time is needed for the nitritation. It is considered that for the sewage containing high load nitrogen in sludge treatment process as like the sludge thickener supernatant, the nitritation can be applied, which can be suggested as a modification method of MWTP.

• Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.112-118
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• 2008

Residual solid in excess sludge treated by hydrothermal reaction was investigated as raw material for its recycling. Treated excess sludge and residual solid were also focused on their content change during hydrothermal reaction. Two kinds of excess sludge, obtained from a local food factory and a municipal wastewater treatment process, were tested under various conditions. Following hydrothermal reaction, depending on the reaction conditions, biodegradable substrates in treated excess sludge appeared to increase. The separated residual solid was a composite composed of organic and inorganic materials. The proportion of carbon varied from 34.0 to 41.6% depending on reaction conditions. Although 1.89% of hazardous materials were detected, SiO2 (Quartz) was a predominant constituent of the residual solid. X-ray diffraction (XRD) experiments revealed that the residual solid was of a partially amorphous state, suggesting that the residual solids could be easily converted to stable and non harmful substances through a stabilization process. Thus, this technology could be successfully used to control excess sludge and its reuse.

• Journal of Wetlands Research
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.165-170
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• 2013

Pilot scale study was carried out to produce Volatile Fatty Acids with primary sludge from municipal wastewater treatment plant. An acid fermenter was operated at pH 9, $35^{\circ}C$, SRT of 3.5-4.25d, using a final effluent as elutriating water(Mode-I) and pH 9, SRT 5d, temperature of $35^{\circ}C$(Mode-II), $55^{\circ}C$(Mode-III), using a primarily treated water as elutriating water. Although solubilization rate was enhanced with the increase of temperature, the VFAs production rate was decreased. The VS reduction was shown approximately 56%, and the sludge volume reduction was 93%. The optimal conditions for solubilization was obtained at pH 9, $35^{\circ}C$ and SRT of 5d.