• Food Engineering Progress
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.122-129
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• 2009

Ultraviolet (UV) is widely used as a sterilizing agent in restaurants and catering facilities in Korea. Efficacy of UV sterilizers (UVS) was investigated against E. coli on the inner bottom of stainless steel cups. UV intensity on the bottom of cups varied widely with the locations of cups in UVS, showing higher values at center while lower values at outskirts. The deviations in UV intensity were remarkable on top shelf, but alleviated as proceeded to middle and bottom shelves. Inactivation of E. coli was proportional to the UV intensity and treatment time, consequently to UV dose, and showed a pseudo-first-order kinetics with tailing. Initial inactivation rate constants ($K_{1}$) deviated with the locations of the cups, while final inactivation rate constants ($K_{2}$) showed comparable values. An equation for the calculation of the proposed UV treatment time was suggested.

• Korean Journal of Chemical Engineering
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• v.35 no.12
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• pp.2384-2393
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• 2018

Porous alginate-based hydrogel beads (porous ABH) have been prepared through a facile and sustainable template-assisted method using nano-calcium carbonate and nano-$CaCO_3$ as pore-directing agent for the efficient capture of methylene blue (MB). The materials were characterized by various techniques. The sorption capacities of ABH towards MB were compared with pure sodium alginate (ABH-1:0) in batch and fixed-bed column adsorption studies. The obtained adsorbent (ABH-1:3) has a higher BET surface area and a smaller average pore diameter. The maximum adsorption capacity of ABH-1:3 obtained from Langmuir model was as high as $1,426.0mg\;g^{-1}$. The kinetics strictly followed pseudo-second order rate equation and the adsorption reaction was effectively facilitated, approximately 50 minutes to achieve adsorption equilibrium, which was significantly shorter than that of ABH-1:0. The thermodynamic parameters revealed that the adsorption was spontaneous and exothermic. Thomas model fitted well with the breakthrough curves and could describe the dynamic behavior of the column. More significantly, the uptake capacity of ABH-1:3 was still higher than 75% of the maximum adsorption capacity even after ten cycles, indicating that this novel adsorbent can be a promising adsorptive material for removal of MB from aqueous solution under batch and continuous systems.

• Korean Journal of Chemical Engineering
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• v.35 no.12
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• pp.2394-2402
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• 2018

Textile dyes are some of the pollutants which have received the most attention because of the large volume of wastewater generated by the textile industry. Removal by means of adsorption is one of the most versatile alternatives to treat these effluents. Even though different adsorbents such as activated carbons and mineral materials have been proposed, polymeric adsorbents are a viable alternative. This work reports for the first time the use of polyelectrolyte PTZ and macroelectrolyte MTZ containing tetrazole groups as adsorbents useful in the textile dyes removal present in aqueous solutions and wastewater. Because of the anionic character of the tetrazole group, MTZ exhibits selective adsorption capabilities for cationic dyes of up to $156.25mg{\cdot}g^{-1}$. The kinetic study of the process of adsorption shows that PTZ and MTZ fit a pseudo second-order model. MTZ also shows utility as a flocculant agent in the treatment of wastewater containing dyes Indigo Blue and Reactive Black. The results showed that PTZ and MTZ may be used in the treatment of wastewater in a process of coagulation-flocculation followed by the treatment by adsorption. This two-stage treatment removed up to 95% of the dye present in the wastewater. As well as removing the dyes, the values for COD, suspended solids, pH, and color of the wastewater decreased, thus significantly improving its quality.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.467-475
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• 2001

A triblock copolymer based on $poly(\varepsilon-caprolactone)$ (PCL) as the hydrophobic part and poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) as the hydrophilic portion was synthesized by a ring-opening mechanism of ${\varepsilon}-caprolactone$ with PEG containing a hydroxyl group at bot h ends as an initiator. The synthesized block copolymers of PCL/PEG/PCL (CEC) were confirmed and characterized using various analysis equipment such as 1H NMR, DSC, FT-IR, and WAXD. Core-shell type nanoparticles of CEC triblock copolymers were prepared using a dialysis technique to estimate their potential as a colloidal drug carrier using a hydrophobic drug. From the results of particle size analysis and transmission electron microscopy, the particle size of CEC core-shell type nanoparticles was determined to be about 20-60 nm with a spherical shape. Since CEC block copolymer nanoparticles have a core-shell type micellar structure and small particle size similar to polymeric micelles, CEC block copolymer can self-associate at certain concentrations and the critical association concentration (CAC) was able to be determined by fluorescence probe techniques. The CAC values of the CEC block copolymers were dependent on the PCL block length. In addition, drug loading contents were dependent on the PCL block length: the larger the PCL block length, the higher the drug loading content. Drug release from CEC core-shell type nanoparticles showed an initial burst release for the first 12 hrs followed by pseudo-zero order release kinetics for 2 or 3 days. CEC-2 block copolymer core-shell type nanoparticles were degraded very slowly, suggesting that the drug release kinetics were governed by a diffusion mechanism rather than a degradation mechanism irrelevant to the CEC block copolymer composition.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.18 no.11
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• pp.1166-1172
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• 1997

[FeⅢ(BLPA)DBC]BPh4, a new functional model for the catechol dioxygenases, has been synthesized, where BLPA is bis((6-methyl-2-pyridyl)methyl)(2-pyridylmethyl)amine and DBC is 3,5-di-tert-butylcatecholate dianion. The BLPA complex has a structural feature that iron center has a six-coordinate geometry with N4O2 donor set. It exhibits EPR signals at g=5.5 and 8.0 which are typical values for the high-spin FeⅢ (S=5/2) complex with axial symmetry. The BLPA complex reacts with O2 within a few hours to afford intradiol cleavage (75%) and extradiol cleavage (15%) products which is very unique result of all [Fe(L)DBC] complexes studied. The iron-catecholate interaction of BLPA complex is significantly stronger, resulting in the enhanced covalency of the metal-catecholate bonds and low energy catecholate to FeⅢ charge transfer bands at 583 and 962 nm in CH3CN. The enhanced covalency is also reflected by the isotropic shifts exhibited by the DBC protons, which indicate increased semiquinone character. The greater semiquinone character in the BLPA complex correlates well with its high reactivity towards O2. Kinetic studies of the reaction of the BLPA complex with 1 atm O2 in CH3OH and CH2Cl2 under pseudo-first order conditions show that the BLPA complex reacts with O2 much slower than the TPA complex, where TPA is tris(2-pyridylmethyl)amine. It is presumably due to the steric effect of the methyl substituent on the pyridine ring. Nevertheless, both the high specificity and the fast kinetics can be rationalized on the basis of its low energy catecholate to FeⅢ charge transfer bands and large isotropic NMR shifts for the BLPA protons. These results provide insight into the nature of the oxygenation mechanism of the catechol dioxygenases.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.471-484
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• 2019

The complex combination of organic contaminants in the wastewater made water treatment challenging; hence, organic matter in water bodies is usually measured in terms of organic carbon. Since it is important to identify the types of compounds when deciding suitable treatment methods, this study implemented a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the organic matter content in an actual graywater sample from Ulsan, Republic of Korea using mass spectroscopy (MS). The graywater was treated using adsorption to remove the organic contaminants. Using orbitrap MS, the organic matter content between an untreated graywater and the treated effluent were compared which yielded a significant formula count difference for the samples. It was revealed that CHON formula has the highest removal count. Isotherm studies found that the Freundlich equation was the best fit with a coefficient of determination ($R^2$) of 0.9705 indicating a heterogenous GAC surface with a multilayer characteristic. Kinetics experiments fit the pseudo-second order equation with an $R^2$ of 0.9998 implying that chemisorption is the rate-determining step between the organic compounds and GAC at rate constant of $52.53g/mg{\cdot}h$. At low temperatures, the reaction between GAC and organic compounds were found to be spontaneous and exothermic. The conditions for optimization were set to achieve a maximum DOC and TN removal which yielded removal percentages of 94.59% and 80.75% for the DOC and TN, respectively. The optimum parameter values are the following: pH 6.3, 2.46 g of GAC for every 30 mL of graywater sample, 23.39 hrs contact time and $38.6^{\circ}C$.

• Advances in environmental research
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.1-18
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• 2016

Magnetic nano-based sorbents have been synthesized for the recovery of two rare earth elements (REE: Nd(III) and Yb(III)). The magnetic nano-based particles are synthesized by a one-pot hydrothermal procedure involving co-precipitation under thermal conditions of Fe(III) and Fe(II) salts in the presence of chitosan. The composite magnetic/chitosan material is crosslinked with epichlorohydrin and modified by grafting alanine and serine amine-acids. These materials are tested for the binding of Nd(III) (light REE) and Yb(III) (heavy REE) through the study of pH effect, sorption isotherms, uptake kinetics, metal desorption and sorbent recycling. Sorption isotherms are well fitted by the Langmuir equation: the maximum sorption capacities range between 9 and 18 mg REE $g^{-1}$ (at pH 5). The sorption mechanism is endothermic (positive value of ${\Delta}H^{\circ}$) and contributes to increase the randomness of the system (positive value of ${\Delta}S^{\circ}$). The fast uptake kinetics can be described by the pseudo-second order rate equation: the equilibrium is reached within 4 hours of contact. The sub-micron size of sorbent particles strongly reduces the contribution of resistance to intraparticle diffusion in the control of uptake kinetics. Metal desorption using acidified thiourea solutions allows maintaining sorption efficiency for at least four successive cycles with limited loss in sorption capacity.

• Advances in environmental research
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.107-116
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• 2014

This study aimed to synthesize dispersed and reactive nanoscale zero-valent iron (nZVI) with poly(1-vinylpyrrolidone-co-vinyl acetate) (PVP/VA), nontoxic and biodegradable stabilizer. The nZVI used for the experiments was prepared by reduction of ferric solution in the presence of PVP/VA with specific weight ratios to iron contents. Colloidal stability was investigated based on the rate of sedimentation, hydrodynamic radius and zeta potential measurement. The characteristic time, which demonstrated dispersivity of particles resisting aggregation, increased from 21.2 min (bare nZVI) to 97.8 min with increasing amount of PVP/VA (the ratios of 2). For the most stable nZVI coated by PVP/VA, its reactivity was examined by nitrate reduction in a closed batch system. The pseudo-first-order kinetic rate constants for the nitrate reduction by the nanoparticles with PVP/VA ratios of 0 and 2 were 0.1633 and $0.1395min^{-1}$ respectively. A nitrogen mass balance, established by quantitative analysis of aqueous nitrogen species, showed that the addition of PVP/VA to nZVI can change the reduction capacity of the nanoparticles.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.21-26
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• 2008

Nitrate adsorption from aqueous solutions onto zinc chloride ($ZnCl_2$) treated coconut Granular Activated Carbon (GAC) was studied in a batch mode at two different initial nitrate concentrations (25 and 50 mg/L). The rate of nitrate uptake on prepared media was fast in the beginning, and 50% of adsorption was occurred within 10 min. The adsorption equilibrium was achieved within one hour. The mechanism of adsorption of nitrate on $ZnCl_2$ treated coconut GAC was investigated using four simplified kinetic models : the rate parameters were calculated for each model. The kinetic analysis indicated that pseudo-second-order kinetic with pore-diffusion-controlled was the best correlation of the experimental kinetic data in the present adsorption study.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.59 no.4
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• pp.493-502
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• 2021

We prepared and investigated a biosynthesized nanoparticulate system with high adsorption and release capacity of letrozole. Silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) were biosynthesized using olive leaf extract. Cysteine was capped AgNPs to increase the adsorption capacity and suitable interaction between nanoparticles and drug. Morphology and size of nanoparticles were confirmed using transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Nanoparticles were spherical with an average diameter of less than 100 nm. Cysteine capping was successfully confirmed by Fourier transform infrared resonance (FTIR) spectroscopy and elemental analysis (CHN). Also, the factors of letrozole adsorption were optimized and the linear and non-linear forms of isotherms and kinetics were studied. Confirmation of the adsorption data of letrozole by cysteine capped nanoparticles in the Langmuir isotherm model indicated the homogeneous binding site of modified nanoparticles surface. Furthermore, the adsorption rate was kinetically adjusted to the pseudo-second-order model, and a high adsorption rate was observed, indicating that cysteine coated nanoparticles are a promising adsorbent for letrozole delivery. Finally, the kinetic release profile of letrozole loaded modified nanoparticles in simulated gastric and intestinal buffers was studied. Nearly 40% of letrozole was released in simulated gastric fluid with pH 1.2, in 30 min and the rest of it (60%) was released in simulated intestinal fluid with pH 7.4 in 10 h. These results indicate the efficiency of the cysteine capped AgNPs for adsorption and release of drug letrozole for breast cancer therapy.