Modeling of a water vapor selective membrane unit to increase the energy efficiency of humidity harvesting

Abstract

Air humidity is a promising source of clean and safe drinking water. However, in conventional systems a lot of energy is wasted on the production of cold air, rather than the condensation of water vapor. This study examines the possibility of using a hollow fiber membrane module to make this process more energy efficient, by separating the vapor from other gases, prior to the cooling process with the help of selective membranes. The water vapor concentration within a fiber has been modeled using a random walker approach, and the membrane permeability has been implemented as a re-bounce probability for simulation particles interacting with the membrane. Considering the additional work requirement for driving a feed flow through the membrane section and the computed water vapor permeation it could be shown that the energy demand per unit water is lowest for slow flow speeds and favors short and thin fibers. The total energy requirement was estimated to be less than half of the conventional one. Comparison with other CFD simulations and a real life module has shown a good level of agreement, indicating that a membrane section could improve the energy efficiency of humidity harvesting significantly.