119th General Meeting of the KCS

Type Symposium
Area Current Trends in Chemistry for Water Science and Technology
Room No. 407호
Time THU 14:00-:
Code ENVR-2
Subject Development of a sustainable treatment technology for oxyanions in drinking water
Authors CHOE JONG KWON
서울대학교 건설환경공학부, United States
Abstract Providing safe drinking water to the public is a demanding challenge. Depletion of pristine freshwater resources in many parts of the world leads to the use of anthropogenically-impaired water sources, requiring intensive treatment of contaminants. While treatment of these waters is often technically feasible, best available technologies often impose a high financial, environmental, and social cost. A key challenge is developing new water treatment technologies that are more sustainable. A prime example is ion exchange, the go to technology for oxyanions (e.g., perchlorate, nitrate) in drinking water. While effective, this technology suffers from high costs associated with salt use for once-used regeneration brine, and high environmental impacts related to salt mining and waste brine disposal. I will present my research on developing a new sustainable treatment technology for removing the oxyanions, nitrate and perchlorate, from drinking water. The new technology relies on supported Pd-based catalysts to convert oxyanions via reduction by hydrogen to harmless end products. It can be used to directly remove nitrate and perchlorate from drinking water, or in combination with ion exchange to treat waste brine and enable its reuse for resin regeneration. Mechanisms of perchlorate reduction are evaluated by combining kinetic studies with x-ray characterization. The kinetic results are used to design a reactor, and environmental impacts of catalytic treatment are compared to alternative treatment technologies (i.e., ion exchange, biological treatment) using a life cycle assessment tool. The results identify key weaknesses in each technology that impact sustainability, and motivate basic research on improving the activity and longevity of the supported catalysts.
E-mail jkchoe@snu.ac.kr