Chapter 8 - Heat and Mass Transfer in Hollow Fiber Membrane Bundles with Randomly Distributed Fibers

Abstract

Hollow fiber membrane bundles have been used in numerous areas. In many applications, the distribution of hollow fibers in the bundles is rather random. In many cases, the hollow fibers are numerous, which makes the exact control of position hard. In other applications, the fibers are packed unmethodically inside the shell. These factors all contribute to the fibers being distributed randomly in the bundles. Various models are available to govern the fluid flow and heat and mass transfer in randomly distributed bundles. However, the degree of irregularity cannot be reflected in these models. This chapter provides a new approach. The degree of irregularity is reflected by the fractal dimensions of the fibers’ distribution. Further, the basic conjugate Nusselt and Sherwood numbers obtained in previous chapters are used as the basic transport data in the unit cells.