Abstract
Membrane distillation is an active technique that provides pure water with very good rejection and could be applied to water of extremely high salinity. The low productivity of membrane distillation needs intensive efforts to be competitive with other desalination techniques. In this current study, a composite (PS/GNP) membrane, which is composed of polystyrene (PS) based and 0.25% weight percent graphene nanoplates (GNP) has been fabricated via electrospinning and compared with the blank PS membrane. SEM, FTIR, contact angle and porosity characterization have been performed, and the results show that the validity of the predefined conditions, and the contact angle of the composite membrane, which is found to be 91.68°, proved the hydrophobic nature of the composite membrane. A numerical simulation using Ansys 2020 software has been introduced to study the performance of the fabricated composite membrane when used in direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD). The numerical model has been validated with experimental work from the literature and showed an excellent match. The blank PS and composite PS/GNP membranes have been investigated and compared at different operating conditions, i.e., hot water supply temperature and system flow rate. The results show that the composite PS/GNP membrane outperforms the blank PS membrane at all studied operating conditions.
Highlights
Membrane distillation technique (MD) is based on a thermal concept for operation; the difference in temperature between the hot and cold streams promotes the vapor pressure difference, which drives the vapor to be transferred from the hot to cold side [1,2,3]
There are four common configurations for membrane distillation, which are Direct Contact membrane distillation (DCMD) where the feed and permeate are contacting both membrane surfaces directly, Air-Gap membrane Distillation (AGMD) where a condensation surface is used at the permeate side and is separated from the membrane surface by means of an air gap, and Vacuum membrane distillation (VMD) in which a vacuum is initiated at the permeate side to increase the amount of vapors transferred through the membrane and Sweeping
The performance of the fabricated membranes was studied on the direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) model numermembranes was studied on the direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) model nuically
Summary
Membrane distillation technique (MD) is based on a thermal concept for operation; the difference in temperature between the hot and cold streams promotes the vapor pressure difference, which drives the vapor to be transferred from the hot to cold side [1,2,3]. A modified surface membrane has been introduced by Li et al [11], which was proven to have an excellent hydrophobic property (i.e., 162◦ contact angle), outstanding wetting behavior and steady operation They concluded that the modified surface membrane is applicable and has a promising performance when applied to DCMD. The effect of spacer on the DCMD performance besides operating conditions (feed temperature, velocity, and salt concentration) has been investigated experimentally by Ve et al [15]. They concluded that the plastic spacer had the best performance in their study, and the flow rate was proven to be the most critical operating condition on the mass transfer through the membrane. The second point is the design of the numerical model which is suitable for predicting the performance of any fabricated membrane on the DCMD system
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
