Numerical simulation and theoretical study on simultaneous effects of operating parameters in vacuum membrane distillation

CATEGORY: DESALINATION
Desalination, Volume 314, 2 April 2013, Pages 59–66
Numerical simulation and theoretical study on simultaneous effects of operating parameters in vacuum membrane distillation
Shirin Gh. Lovineh, Morteza Asghari, Bita Rajaei
Separation Processes Research Group (SPRG), Department of Engineering, University of Kashan, Ghotb-e-Ravandi Ave., Kashan, Iran
Energy Research Institute, University of Kashan, Ghotb-e-Ravandi Ave., Kashan, Iran
Abstract
Waste heat from refineries and petrochemical industries located close to the Persian Gulf, can be used according to the simple feed inlet condition in vacuum membrane distillation (VMD). In order to enhance the performance of VMD in desalination of Persian Gulf water and to get more flux, researchers constructed a simultaneous heat and mass transfer model in VMD system which they validated with experimental data.
MATLAB was used to build the model. The influence of various operating conditions, including feed temperature, vacuum on permeate side, feed concentration, heat transfer coefficient, feed velocity and some membrane characteristics such as thickness, porosity, pore size distribution and tortuosity on permeate flux were considered. In addition, the effects of feed temperature, feed velocity and membrane thickness on temperature polarization were taken into account. Results revealed that the permeate flux improved with increase of feed temperature, velocity, heat transfer coefficient, porosity and pore size distribution, and decreased with enhancement of vacuum pressure, feed concentration, thickness and tortuosity of membrane.
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