Abstract
Membrane distillation (MD) is an up and coming technology for concentration and separation on the verge of reaching commercialization. One of the remaining boundaries is the lack of available full-scale MD modules and systems suitable to meet the requirements of potential industrial applications. In this work a new type of feed gap air gap MD (FGAGMD) plate and frame module is introduced, designed and characterized with tap water and NaCl–H2O solution. The main feature of the new channel configuration is the separation of the heating and cooling channel from the feed channel, enabling a very high recovery ratio in a single pass. Key performance indicators (KPIs) such as flux, gained output ratio (GOR), recovery ratio and thermal efficiency are used to analyze the performance of the novel module concept within this work. A recovery rate of 93% was reached with tap water and between 32–53% with salt solutions ranging between 117 and 214 g NaCl/kg solution with this particular prototype module. Other than recovery ratio, the KPIs of the FGAGMD are similar to those of an air gap membrane distillation (AGMD) channel configuration. From the experimental results, furthermore, a new MD KPI was defined as the ratio of heating and cooling flow to feed flow. This RF ratio can be used for optimization of the module design and efficiency.
Highlights
Membrane distillation (MD) has drawn increasing interest in the last 10 years from both academia and applicational parties
The individual module performance profiles will be analyzed at the beginning of this section, but subsequent evaluation will be carried out for MD 1 and MD 2 combined as a pair, displaying mean values
Volume flow of the heating and cooling loop is given in L/h since it is tap water in all cases and the physical properties, especially density, can be assumed to be constant and equal to 1 kg/L
Summary
Membrane distillation (MD) has drawn increasing interest in the last 10 years from both academia and applicational parties. Membranes 2019, 9, 118 pharmaceutical industry or food industry because it can be operated at ambient pressure and with low temperatures [24,25,26]. Despite these increasingly practical advances, MD is not fully commercialized yet and some of the reasons repeatedly given are the lack of full-scale MD modules, high specific thermal energy consumption, low recovery rate and a limited variety of available specialized membranes [27,28]
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