Membrane fouling is the main limitation of water and wastewater treatment. Coagulation and adsorption can remove organic materials which play an important role in fouling phenomena. Thus, this study focused on the comparison of the hybrid process of coagulation and adsorption coupled with microfiltration (MF) membrane for the secondary domestic wastewater from an apartment complex in Gwangju city, South Korea. Coagulation and adsorption were adopted as a pretreatment method prior to MF treatment. Three different powdered activated carbon (PAC) and ferric chloride were used as an adsorbent and as a coagulant. MF was operated in a submerged mode using hollow fiber polyethylene membrane with pore size of 0.4 µm for the separation of suspended organic solids resulted from coagulation or PAC particles, which are used for adsorbing organics dissolved in wastewater. Prior to study on the hybrid system, the performance of coagulation and adsorption processes were optimized individually for the removal of organics. Then, the overall performance for the hybrid system of coagulation/MF and PAC/MF was evaluated based on TOC removal, turbidity removal, and flux decline. It was found that the combined coagulation/MF and PAC/MF showed similar performance for TOC removal while coagulation/MF resulted in a significant decrease of the flux decline.

In this work, the structural, optical, morphological, and sensing features of tungsten oxide (WO₃) thin film deposited on a silicon substrate via hot-filament chemical vapor deposition (HFCVD) are described. The experimental characterization tools, such as X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis), and Fourier transform infra-red (FTIR) spectroscopies, etc., were used to determine the properties of WO₃ NPys thin films. The grown WO₃ thin film illustrated closely packed porous pyramidal nanostructures (NPys) of improved grain size properties. The diffraction analysis revealed (100) and (200) of WO₃ phases, suggesting the classic monoclinic crystal WO₃ structure. HFCVD grown WO₃ NPys thin film was employed as electro-active electrode for detecting ethylenediamine in 10 mL of 0.1 M phosphate buffer solution (PBS) by varying the ethylenediamine concentrations from 10 μM to 200 μM at room temperature. With a detection of limit (LOD) of ~9.56 μM, and a quick reaction time (10 s), the constructed chemical sensor achieved a high sensitivity of ~161.33 μA μM⁻¹ cm⁻². The durability test displayed an excellent stability of electrochemical sensor by maintaining over 90% sensitivity after 4 weeks of operation. This work provides a strategy for a facile preparation of WO₃ NPys thin film electrode for sensor applications.