TY - JOUR
T1 - Model-guided design of high-performance membrane distillation modules for water desalination
AU - Mohammadi Ghaleni, Mahdi
AU - Bavarian, Mona
AU - Nejati, Siamak
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support from Bureau of Reclamation, Department of Interior , through DWPR agreement R17AC00139 . S.N. is grateful to Misha Guy at the Yale Center for Research Computation for his help and support.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2018/10/1
Y1 - 2018/10/1
N2 - The significance of geometrical and physical parameters of hollow fiber membrane modules in the membrane distillation process has not been fully evaluated. In this study, we develop a three-dimensional multi-physics model of a hollow fiber membrane module in order to investigate the effect of operating and design parameters on the module performance. The permeate flux and thermal efficiency of the system are considered as the characteristic parameters of the module, operated in direct contact membrane distillation mode (DCMD). The simulation results indicate that the permeate flux for the module can be enhanced by 54% when 1) the hollow fibers are in close-packed configuration, and 2) the interspacing parameter, the ratio of a fiber radius to the center-to-center distance between neighboring fibers, is adjusted properly. We identify the fiber interspacing parameter as a critical parameter for the module design. The permeate flux significantly drops when the interspacing parameter is equal to a value of 0.5, implying that the fibers are adjacent to each other. Moreover, the results indicate that, in our system, the time constant for the mass transfer process through the membrane is higher than that of heat transfer, meaning that the DCMD process for a hollow fiber membrane module under parallel flow condition is a mass transfer limited process.
AB - The significance of geometrical and physical parameters of hollow fiber membrane modules in the membrane distillation process has not been fully evaluated. In this study, we develop a three-dimensional multi-physics model of a hollow fiber membrane module in order to investigate the effect of operating and design parameters on the module performance. The permeate flux and thermal efficiency of the system are considered as the characteristic parameters of the module, operated in direct contact membrane distillation mode (DCMD). The simulation results indicate that the permeate flux for the module can be enhanced by 54% when 1) the hollow fibers are in close-packed configuration, and 2) the interspacing parameter, the ratio of a fiber radius to the center-to-center distance between neighboring fibers, is adjusted properly. We identify the fiber interspacing parameter as a critical parameter for the module design. The permeate flux significantly drops when the interspacing parameter is equal to a value of 0.5, implying that the fibers are adjacent to each other. Moreover, the results indicate that, in our system, the time constant for the mass transfer process through the membrane is higher than that of heat transfer, meaning that the DCMD process for a hollow fiber membrane module under parallel flow condition is a mass transfer limited process.
KW - Hollow fiber membrane
KW - Membrane distillation
KW - Modeling
KW - Module design
KW - Packing configuration
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U2 - 10.1016/j.memsci.2018.06.054
DO - 10.1016/j.memsci.2018.06.054
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85049345317
SN - 0376-7388
VL - 563
SP - 794
EP - 803
JO - Journal of Membrane Science
JF - Journal of Membrane Science
ER -