Feasibility of red mud neutralization with seawater using Taguchi’s methodology

In this study, feasibility of using seawater to neutralize alkaline red mud for its safe disposal has been studied using Taguchi’s design of experimental methodology. Parameters such as weight of red mud, volume of seawater, stirring time and temperature were tested at three levels to study their effect on response characteristic, i.e., pH of the neutralized slurry. The analysis of variance showed that volume of seawater added and quantity of red mud are the two significant parameters with 53.59 and 44.92 % contribution each, respectively. Under the optimized parameters, pH value of red mud slurry reaches to about 8.0 which is within disposable limits. When seawater or other Ca- and Mg-rich brines are added to caustic red mud, the pH of the mixture is reduced causing hydroxide, carbonate or hydroxy carbonate minerals to be precipitated. This mechanism of neutralization process has been explained with emphasis on chemical analysis, mineralogy and morphology of the neutralized red mud. The process improved the physical characteristics of red mud with entrained liquor becoming non-hazardous water with reduced alkalinity. The results would be extremely useful in the process of safe disposal of red mud.     

The effect of optimization and the nesting domain on carbon flux analyses in Asia using a carbon tracking system based on the ensemble Kalman filter

To estimate the surface carbon flux in Asia and investigate the effect of the nesting domain on carbon flux analyses in Asia, two experiments with different nesting domains were conducted using the CarbonTracker developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. CarbonTracker is an inverse modeling system that uses an ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) to estimate surface carbon fluxes from surface CO₂ observations. One experiment was conducted with a nesting domain centered in Asia and the other with a nesting domain centered in North America. Both experiments analyzed the surface carbon fluxes in Asia from 2001 to 2006. The results showed that prior surface carbon fluxes were underestimated in Asia compared with the optimized fluxes. The optimized biosphere fluxes of the two experiments exhibited roughly similar spatial patterns but different magnitudes. Weekly cumulative optimized fluxes showed more diverse patterns than the prior fluxes, indicating that more detailed flux analyses were conducted during the optimization. The nesting domain in Asia produced a detailed estimate of the surface carbon fluxes in Asia and exhibited better agreement with the CO₂ observations. Finally, the simulated background atmospheric CO₂ concentrations in the experiment with the nesting domain in Asia were more consistent with the observed CO₂ concentrations than those in the experiment with the nesting domain in North America. The results of this study suggest that surface carbon fluxes in Asia can be estimated more accurately using an EnKF when the nesting domain is centered in Asian regions.     

Tropical Cyclogenesis in the Intra-Americas Sea: Hurricane Cindy (2005)

The tropical cyclogenesis (TCG) of Atlantic Hurricane Cindy (2005) was investigated to study environmental conditions preceding mesoscale vortex development in the Intra-Americas Sea (IAS; i.e., the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea) using the ERA-Interim Reanalysis pressure level data. Major findings include that the development of a mesoscale vortex occurred downward over Central America due to 600 hPa level enhanced winds downstream of southeasterly winds from northern South America, triggering Cindy's TCG in a few days. The contribution of midlevel enhanced winds should be noted as a potential precursor of other TCGs in the IAS.     

Rapid three-dimensional urban model production using bilayered displacement mapping

The depiction and navigation of large-scale urban landscapes are limited by the great cost of traditional computer-aided design (CAD) models for large urban environment in terms of both the labor of data entry and the runtime computational expense. This article presents a hybrid modeling approach that enables rapid urban model production from legacy spatial data. Our scheme fills the gap between the low geometry models, such as photo-textured digital terrains, and high geometry models, such as true three-dimensional CAD models. To achieve optimal performance in modeling and rendering, we employ bilayered displacement mapping consisting of global displacement mapping (GDM) for terrains and local displacement mapping (LDM) for buildings. The LDM is performed only within image processing so that the complexity of the models depends only on the area of an urban model. We present a use case of rapid urban model production to compare our approach with the traditional polygonal urban models of a widely used geo-browser.     

Adsorption Characteristics of Rhodamine B from Aqueous Solution onto Baryte

Batch sorption experiments were carried out for the adsorption of the basic dye Rhodamine B from aqueous solution using baryte as the adsorbent. The effect of adsorbent dosage, temperature, initial dye concentration and pH were studied. Adsorption data were modeled using first and second order kinetic equations and the intra particle diffusion model. Kinetic studies showed that the adsorption process followed second order rate kinetics with an average rate constant of 0.05458 g mg^–1 min^–1. Dye adsorption equilibrium was attained rapidly after 30 min of contact time. The equilibrium data was fitted to the Langmuir, Freundlich and Tempkin isotherms over a dye concentration range of 50–250 mg/L. The adsorption thermodynamic parameters showed that adsorption was an exothermic, spontaneous and less ordered arrangement process. The adsorbent, baryte, was characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy. The results showed that baryte has good potential for the removal of Rhodamine B from dilute aqueous solution.     

Transposon mutagenesis of Psychrobacter cryohalolentis PAMC 21807 by tri-parental conjugation

Random mutagenesis is commonly used to study gene function. The screening of mutants exhibiting specific pheno- types assists in the identification of phenotype-related genes. In the current study, we isolated Antarctic bacteria, and developed a transposon Tn5 mutagenesis system. A total of 26 strains were isolated from seawater and freshwater near Antarctic King Sejong Research Station, King George Island. Six Psychrobacter strains were identified as psychrophilic, with optimal growth tempera- tures of 10~C or 15~C Psychrobacter cryohalolentis PAMC 21807 with a high growth rate at 4~C was selected for transposon mutagenesis. Tri-parental conjugation with a plasmid containing Tn5 produced 13 putative recombinants containing the selectable marker. Genomic Southern hybridization confirmed Tn5 existed as episomes for seven recombinants, and for a single recombinant, Tn5 was integrated into the genome of Psychrobacter cryohalolentis PAMC 21807. The result indicates that the mutagenesis method, although successful, has a relatively low rate. The psychrophilic bacteria isolated in this study may be a useful resource for studying cold adaptation mechanisms, and the mutagenesis method can be applied to genetic analysis.     

Physical and Acoustic Properties of Gas-bearing Sediments in Jinhae Bay,the South Sea of Korea

High-resolution seismic survey and sediment core sampling were conducted to investigate acoustic characteristics of gas-bearing sediments in Jinhae Bay, the southeast of Korea. The sediment in Jinhae Bay is mostly homogenous mud deposited after the Holocene transgression. Along with the 410 km of chirp seismic profiling, five piston core samples were collected on the track lines.

Gassy sediments are common and occur widely in the bay. Core samples were analyzed for sediment texture, physical properties (porosity, water content, bulk density, and grain density), acoustic properties (compressional wave velocity and attenuation), and electrical resistivity. X-radiograph image analysis was also performed to observe the shape of degassing cracks. There is no significant downcore variation on physical and sediment textures regardless of existence of gas bubbles. However, compressional wave velocity dramatically decreases from average 1480 to 1380～739 m/s for the cores that penetrate the gas-bearing zones. This is probably due to degassying cracks that developed by escaping gases and free gas bubbles that are still trapped in the cores. Electrical resistivity is the only geotechnical property that increases in the gas-bearing zone where compressional wave velocity abruptly decreases. This indicates the possibility of using both electrical resistivity as an index variable as well as to compressional wave velocity to identify gassy sediment microstructure because there are little changes in texture and composition of sediment.     

Effect of salinity on acute copper and zinc toxicity to Tigriopus japonicus: The difference between metal ions and nanoparticles

We investigated the effects of salinity (5‰, 15‰, 25‰ and 35‰) on metal ion (Cu and Zn) and nanoparticle (NP) CuO and ZnO toxicity to Tigriopus japonicus. Increasing the test media volume without renewal increased the 96-h LC₅₀ for Cu (32.75 mg L⁻¹) compared to the reported value (3.9 mg L⁻¹). There was no significant difference in acute toxicity at different salinities between acclimated and unacclimated T. japonicus (p > 0.05). Increasing salinity decreased the dissolved concentrations of Cu and Zn ions due to the precipitation of the metal ions, consequently reducing the acute toxicity to T. japonicus. The effect of salinity on acute CuO and ZnO NP toxicity was similar to that on metal ion toxicity. Since the aggregation of NPs generally enhanced at higher salinities, both the dissolution and aggregation of CuO and ZnO NPs may control the effect of salinity on acute toxicity to T. japonicus.     

Improved fog detection from satellite in the presence of clouds

This study analyzes radiative effect of the higher clouds over the fog layer and presents the improvement of fog detection over the Korean peninsula, utilizing satellite data of the Multi-functional Transport SATellite (MTSAT)-1R and the MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and the Look-Up Table (LUT) based on Radiative Transfer Model (RTM) simulations. Fog detection utilizing the satellite data from visible (0.68 µm) and infrared (3.75 µm and 10.8 µm) channels has been evaluated in comparison with ground-based observations over 52 meteorological stations in the Korean Peninsula from March 2006 to February 2007. The threshold values for fog sensing have been derived from the difference (i.e., T_3.7–11) in brightness temperature between 3.75 µm (T_3.7) and 10.8 µm (T₁₁) during day and night, and also from the reflectivity at 0.68 µm (R_0.68) in the daytime. In the twilight, however, the difference between the temperature values at 10.8 µm and their maximum within previous 15 days (i.e., T_11max-11) are used instead, because the 3.75 µm channel is inaccurate for the fog detection at dawn/dusk. The sensitivity of the T_3.7–11 values with respect to the clouds is investigated based on the cloud variables such as its height, optical thickness, and amount. The values of T_3.7–11 are the most sensitive to cloud height, followed by cloud optical thickness and effective radius, while R0.68 is insensitive to cloud height. The sensitivity is examined with various conditions of cloud phases and day/night. Sixteen cases among eighteen fog occurrences, which have been unable to be sensed by using only the conventional threshold values, are successfully detected with the additional LUT corrections, indicating a significant improvement. The method of fog detection in this study can be useful to the Communication, Ocean, and Meteorological Satellite (COMS) Meteorological Data Processing System (CMDPS) by reducing the cloud effect on fog sensing.