水環境国際招聘賞（いであ招聘賞）（JSWE‑IDEA Water Environment International
Exchange Award）授賞に関して
本会では，水環境分野の国際交流・国際協力の促進を目的として，いであ株式会社からのご出捐により，水環境国際招聘賞と水環境国際活動賞を設けております。水環境国際招聘賞は本会年会で研究発表を行う海外在住外国人会員に対して，来日費用等の助成を行う制度です。第 52 回年会には中国から 2 名，韓国から 1 名を招聘し，研究発表を行っていただきました。発表を終えて帰国された受賞者に参加報告を書いていただきましたので，ご紹介します。
なお，今年度の水環境国際招聘賞の募集案内は夏頃に本誌会告に掲載する予定です。
（水環境国際活動賞・招聘賞選考委員会）

JSWE-IDEA Water Environment International
Exchange Award
Associate Professor,
Department of Environmental Engineering, Inha University（仁荷大学，副教授）

Jeonghwan KIM（金正桓）
First of all, I would like to thank to Japan Society on
Water Environment（JSWE）for giving me this greathonor in 52nd Annual Conference of JSWE held in
Hokkaido University from March 15‑17, 2018.
Although this was my ﬁrst experience in attending
JSEW annual conference, the impact was so high forme to develop future collaborations by sharing myresearch results and discussion with many colleagues
during conference period.
In this conference, I gave a presentation focusing
anaerobic membrane bioreactor treating domestic
wastewater. Wastewater is not the target materials
any more to be treated but is a valuable resource that
we can recover from it. At present, wastewater
consumes a lot of energy through conventional
wastewater treatment because it is treated aerobically.
Under aerobic condition, more than 50 ％ of totalenergy needs to be consumed by providing oxygen to
the microorganisms for their biochemical reactions andbiomass growth. In this presentation, anaerobic
ﬂuidized bed membrane bioreactor （AFMBR） wasintroduced as a promising technology alternative to
aerobic MBR for domestic sewage treatment.
Anaerobic technology has several advantages of（1）norequirement of oxygen supply,（2）biogas productionin the form of methane which can be used as arenewable energy and low biomass production.
However, anaerobic treatment itself should not beenough to satisfy stringent eﬄuent qualities. Anaerobic
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membrane bioreactor is to combine anaerobic
bioreactor with membrane ﬁltration. Membrane canretain anaerobes with slow-growth rate completely andproduce high eﬄuent qualities. However, membrane
fouling caused by deposition of foulant materials on
membrane surface and/or within membrane pores is
an inevitable phenomenon as a main hurdle to beovercome.
Anaerobic fluidized bed membrane bioreactor（AFMBR） is to combine anaerobic ﬂuidized bed
membrane bioreactor with submerged membraneﬁltration. Granular activated carbon （GAC） particles
are ﬂuidized by recirculating bulk suspension only
through the reactor. Since there is no biogas sparging,energy consumption can be reduced signiﬁcantly（lessthan 0 1 kWh m‑3） to control membrane fouling.
Comparative study was performed by applying
adsorbing （GAC） and non-adsorbing （PET beads）
ﬂuidized media in the AFMBR system treating
synthetic wastewater. The GAC particles as ﬂuidized
media outperformed PET beads in terms of foulingcontrol. Overall COD removal eﬃciency was 95 ％ witheffluent SCOD of about 18 mg L‑1 under GAC
ﬂuidization, which is about10 ％ higher than that with
PET beads. Electrical energy required to operate
AFMBR using GAC was 0 028 kWh m‑3, and this was
50 ％ lower than required by PET beads due to larger
media size than GAC.

水環境学会誌

Journal of Japan Society on Water Environment

JSWE-IDEA Water Environment International
Exchange Award
Professor, Shanghai Key Lab for Urban Ecological Processes and Eco-Restoration
School of Ecological and Environmental Sciences,
East China Normal University（華東師範大学，教授）

Guangyin Zhen（甄广印）I am very pleased to be invited to attend the 52nd
Annual Conference of Japan Society on Water
Environment（JSWE）held from March 15 - 17, 2018 in
Hokkaido, Japan. I would like to thank JSWE
committee for providing me this great opportunity toattend this wonderful conference, to visit such
beautiful and picturesque city, Sapporo, and to meet somany distinguished researchers in diﬀerent researchareas, from diﬀerent countries. I also want to say
thank you to the award committee to award me theJSWE-IDEA Water Environment International
Exchange Award, and it is indeed a great honor to win
this Award.
I got my Ph.D. in Tongji University. During mydoctoral course, I was sent to Tohoku University as aJoint Ph.D. student by Chinese government in Sept.
2012 for one-year study. Then, I was invited by Prof.
Yu-You Li to this university as a visiting research
fellow for another half year. In Jul. 2014, I wasawarded “JSPS Postdoctoral Fellowship for ForeignResearchers” by the Japan Society for the Promotionof Sciences （JSPS）, and worked as the Postdoctoral
research fellow in the National Institute forEnvironmental Studies （NIES）, Japan till Aug. 2016.
After a short visiting to Tohoku University, I joined in
East China Normal University in 2017.
In the conference, I gave a presentation regarding“In-situ Electrochemical Stimulation to Upgrade
Co-digestion Behaviors of Sewage Sludge and FoodWaste”. As we know, the continuous consumption offossil fuels has caused energy crisis. And this issues
thus promotes research into the development of newtechnologies for renewable energy recovery from
diﬀerent kinds of bio-wastes, like sewage sludge andfood waste. Anaerobic digestion （AD） is a welldeveloped technology for such purpose but still withsome technical issues. One alternative option to AD
can be microbial electrolysis cell （MEC）, a recent
emerging technique for methane production via
electromethanogenesis, relying on the special

Vol. 41（A） No. 6（2018）

electroactive microbes colonizing on both electrodes
with a small electric stimulation. Based on this concept,
we introduced MEC system into the traditional AD
process, i.e. so-called MEC-AD system, to investigatewhether and how the combination of MEC with AD
process can improve biowastes degradation as well as
methane productivity. The in-situ electrochemical
stimulation eﬀectively promoted methane production
and process stability, and the combined systemproduced higher methane than the single AD process
when the external voltage was increased to t 0 4 V,
with up to 50％ increase at food waste: sludge ratio
0 2: 0 8 and 0 4 V. The MEC-AD system relies upon
the syntrophic interactions between exoelectrogens
and fermentative partners. Fermenters can convert
the complex substrates to metabolites accessible toelectroactive microorganisms on anode, making theoverall fermentation thermodynamically favorable thusincreasing the methane recovery. Also, the electroactive
bacteria on the cathode can reduce carbon dioxide tomethane, thus further increasing methane content inbiogas. The preliminary results demonstrated that theMEC-AD system holds the great potentials forbiowastes treatment, and green and renewable energy
recovery, and we hope this technology can contributeto dealing with energy crisis, supporting the realizationof the energy-sustainable and carbon-less society in thenear future. Of course, MEC-AD system, at the presentstage, is far from practical applications. Numerous
challenges need to be tackled before considering its
real implementations.
Finally, I want to thank JSWE committee once again
for oﬀering me this chance to introduce my new
research results, and to communicate with Japaneseexperts. I am very sure that the amazing experience
will make great contributions to the future researchcollaboration and building more solid friendshipbetween Japan and China. I am looking forward toattend JSWEʼs future conferences.

199

Reinforced Communication and Collaboration in Water
Environment Field between Japan and China through JSWE
Research Associate，Graduate School at Shenzhen,
Tsinghua University（清华大学深圳研究生院，助理研究員）

Zhuo Chen（陳卓）

With the recommendation of the Chinese Society for
Environmental Sciences, I was delighted to attend the52nd Annual Conference of JSWE that was held in
Sapporo from March 15‑17, 2018. I greatly appreciate
the kind support of JSWE and be great honored toreceive the JSWE-IDEA Water Environment
International Exchange Award.
I obtained the doctoral degree in the ﬁeld ofEnvironmental Engineering from the University ofTechnology, Sydney, Australia in June 2014 andconducted post-doctoral research at the graduate
school at Shenzhen, Tsinghua University, Chinaafterwards. I am currently the research associate at
the School of Environment, Tsinghua University. My
research mainly focus on water reuse systemevaluation and control, with special emphases onreclaimed water quality target determination, system
holistic ensurance, evaluation method and model andrisk prevention and warning. In the past four years, I
also participated in the international guideline
development under ISO TC282/SC2（Water Reuse inUrban Areas） and worked as the convenor of ISO/
TC282/SC2/WG4.
During the 52nd Annual Conference of JSWE, I heard
many good presentations from diﬀerent universities,
institutes and companies of Japan which cover topics ofadvanced water treatment and analytical technologies,
soil and water quality investigations and analyses,
energy and valuable resource recovery technologies,
risk management and toxicity-based safety evaluation,etc. This is a valuable platform to share knowledge
and build networks to better understand and manage
the water environment challenges and opportunities.
Presently, water reclamation and reuse is one of themost important approaches to alleviate water shortage
and water environment contamination problems.
Ensuring the safe, eﬃcient and stable operation ofwater reuse system is a key component to reclaimed
water utilization and development. Therefore, I gave apresentation entitled “Centralized and decentralized
water reuse system in urban areas of China: current

200

needs and future perspectives”. Because of continuing
urbanization and water consumption, approximately
two thirds of Chinaʼs 661 cities encountered water
shortage problems. Water reuse is among the fastest
growing utility sectors in China. The promotion ofwater reuse activities was strongly correlated with
provincial water resource availability and regional
economic levels. The water reuse system models werefurther discussed. Based on analyses of key
components of centralized water reuse systems, ourstudy proposed four diﬀerent utilization models andaddressed the strategies of multiple barrier approachand minimum technological requirement formanagement. It is also identiﬁed that decentralized
system can be a supplement to centralized system
which can raise ﬂexibility and convenience in special
circumstances. Our results also support thedevelopment of two international guidelines, namely
ISO 20760‑1 and ISO 20760‑2. The optimization ofthese models can be beneﬁcial for densely populated
urban areas, not only in China but also in otherregions that encounter similar situations.
Our research team have collaborations with several
Japanese universities, institutes and companies,including Kyoto University, National Institute ofAdvanced Industrial Science and Technology（AIST）
and Kurita Water Industries, etc. I was impressed by
the rigorous attitude and dedication of Japanesescholars and students on their work and researchstudies. This is my ﬁrst time to attend the JSWEannual conference. During the conference, I met many
distinguished professors, scholars, engineers,professionals and research students. We had goodcommunication on speciﬁc research studies as well as
cultural exchanges. I think this kind of activities issigniﬁcant and valuable. I would like to sincerely
appreciate the conference organizing committee andwant to contribute to future activities andcommunications between Chinese and Japanesesocieties.

水環境学会誌

Journal of Japan Society on Water Environment