This study evaluated the water quality improvement effect of the artificial recharge, which is one of a solution to prevent water pollution and drought due to climate changes. Experiments were conducted on artificial recharge sand columns. The pre-tre...
This study evaluated the water quality improvement effect of the artificial recharge, which is one of a solution to prevent water pollution and drought due to climate changes. Experiments were conducted on artificial recharge sand columns. The pre-treatment methods were O3 oxidation and O3 + H2O2 oxidation, and the chosen retention times were 1, 5, 15 and 30 days. To evaluate the improvement of water quality, this study observed the fate of organic matters, microbials, disinfection byproducts formation potentials(DBPFPs) and pharmaceutically active compounds(PhACs). We checked the reduction of the Specific UV Absorbance(SUVA) value by oxidation influence, and decrease of humic area and increase in the Low molecular weights(LMWs) area in the Liquid Chromatography-Organic Carbon Detection(LC-OCD) by oxidation influence. O3 oxidation and O3 + H2O2 oxidation pre-treatment in source water showed destruction of aromatic materials and transfer of polymer substance fractions to low molecular weight fraction. As a result, Biodegradable dissolved organic carbon(BDOC) and Assimilable organic carbon(AOC), which are indicators of biodegradablity, increased by about 1.9 times for O3 treated water and about 1.4 times for O3 + H2O2 treated water. It was confirmed that O3 treated water showed higher biodegradability due to the low molecular weight of the polymer substance by O3 oxidation. The result also showed that water quality characteristics, with regard to the period of retention time after pre-treatment, DOC decreased 50% in O3 treated water and 47.9% in O3 + H2O2 treated water within 5 days, and the reduction rate greatly decreased afterwards. It was also observed that the majority of organic matters decompositable by microorganisms were reduced within the first 5 days, and O3 treated water was more effective in DOC reduction because O3 treated water has higher initial biodegradability.
In 30 days retention time, the BDOC and AOC, which is a biological stability index, showed a reduction of 94% in O3 treated water and 88.1% in O3 + H2O2 treated water (p < 0.005) in BDOC. In addition, it was confirmed that reduction of 94% in O3 treated water and reduction of 86.2% in O3 + H2O2 treated water (p < 0.002) in AOC. As the retention time in the columns prolonged, microbials transferd from the High nucleic acid(HNA) region that includes activated and grown cells, to the Low nucleic acid(LNA) region because the water within had a low nutrient environment due to micobial decompositions. ATP, an indicator for the activity of microorganisms, also showed a tendency to decrease with prolonged retention time in columns. It was judged due to the reduction of HNA region microorganisms, which have a high correlation with ATP. In the results for DBPFPs, it was observed that CHCl3 in THMs was reduced by 45.6% for O3 treated water and 26.8% for O3 + H2O2 treated water, due to the reduction of humic substances, which are well known as a DBP precursor compound for O3 oxidation and O3 + H2O2 oxidation methods. In the columns, after 5 days retention time, CHCl3 decreased 12.8% for O3 treated water and 9.9% for O3 + H2O2 treated water, due to reduction of acidic organic matters that contributes to DBPFPs. In 30 days retention time, CHCl3 decreased 75.5% for O3 treated water and 57.4% for O3 + H2O2 treated water. Because the environment inside the columns are anoxic in this retention time, the humics were easily biodegradable by anoxic microbes. Also, PhACs were also observed by O3 oxidation and O3 + H2O2 oxidation method to 35 ~ 100% reduction of 11 kinds. In the 1 day artificial rejuvenation process without oxidation treatment, 10 kinds of medicines except carbamazepine It was confirmed that a high removal rate of 71 to 100% was observed in the material.
In this study, O3 treatment showed high efficiencies in reducing organic compounds, DBPFPs and PhACs. O3 + H2O2 treatment showed high efficiency in reducing organic matter, DBPFPs and PhACs, but dissatisfied AOC and BDOC guidelines. Also, it was seen that biodegradable organic materials were degraded at the early stage of artificial recharge and decomposition of relatively undegradable organic materials proceeded after anoxic conditions. Therefore, this study will be a basic research that can provide useful information to select the retention time considering the target water quality and economical efficiency by using O3 and O3 + H2O2 method for artificial recharge.