Abstract
Abstract Water abstraction for cooling requirements in energy production accounts for more than 40% of the total gross abstraction in the European Union, thus driving the interest in using alternative water resources. The current study presents the application of direct contact membrane distillation for the treatment of wastewater from a flue gas desulphurization (FGD) plant for potential applications in cooling towers. Membrane distillation (MD) performance of two commercial lab-scale membrane modules (in capillary and flat configuration) was compared in terms of flux, specific energy consumption (SEC), and rejection towards non-volatiles present in wastewater samples, pretreated according to various protocols. For the flat module, two commercial membranes were tested. In all cases, a good quality permeate was produced, with stable flux over experimental time. SEC of MD for wastewater treatment, calculated experimentally, varied from 946 to 2,830 kWh/m3 for the various applied membranes operating under different conditions. MD allows extracting more than 80% freshwater from FGD wastewater stream while maintaining high (>99.60%) rejection towards electrical conductivity.
Highlights
Scarcity of freshwater is emerging as a big challenge in many countries across the globe
Power generation is the largest consumer of water and it has been estimated that more than 40% of total water abstraction within Europe is being used by the power generation sector (Van Vliet et al 2013; Vandecasteele et al 2016)
The current study aims at investigating the performance of Membrane distillation (MD) for the treatment of real wastewater from a flue gas desulphurization (FGD) plant to be used as an alternative water source for cooling tower applications in the power industry
Summary
Driolia,b,c,d a National Research Council – Institute on Membrane Technology (ITM–CNR), Via Pietro BUCCI, c/o The University of Calabria, Cubo 17C, 87036 Rende CS, Italy b The University of Calabria – Department of Environmental and Chemical Engineering, University of Calabria, Cubo 44A, Via Pietro BUCCI, 87036 Rende CS, Italy c WCU Energy Engineering Department, Hanyang University, Room 917 9th Floor FTC Bldg., 17 Haengdang-dong, Seongdong-gu, Seoul 133-791, S. Korea d KAU – CEDT, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
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