Experimental and numerical evaluation of membrane distillation module for oxygen-18 separation

Abstract

A novel module design for membrane distillation is attempted in this work. For this purpose, three-dimensional numerical simulations were carried out to investigate the effect of baffle configuration on the performance of three modules for liquid gap membrane distillation. Pure water was considered as feed and the simulations were performed based on dusty gas model, which describes the diffusion of vapor through the air entrapped in the membrane pores. The simulation predicted 15–25% improvement for vapor flux by utilizing triangular baffles in the module compared to a module without baffle. In particular, the newly designed triangular baffle provided uniform temperature distribution over the membrane surface, thus contributing to the improvement of vapor flux. The simulated module was constructed in order to conduct 18O isotope water separation from pure water. It is worth noting that the novel module design can be used in any membrane distillation configurations.