Abstract
Ceramic membranes have great potential for water treatment and filtering applications. However, one of the drawbacks of ceramic membrane filtration is its low permeability due to small functioning nanometer pore size. Increasing the membrane permeability without impairing its filtration function is, therefore, a crucial and practical problem. From hydrodynamical perspectives, keeping the inlet radius of membrane pores unchanged but only re-defining the pore geometry also could help to improve the permeate flow rate. In this paper, the membrane permeability with corrugated pores is investigated via hydrodynamical simulations using smoothed particle hydrodynamics. For a given corrugation length, it is found that there exists a range of values of the corrugation amplitude in which the membrane permeability is enhanced and a peak value is also achieved. On expanding the corrugation length, the range of the corrugation amplitude for permeability enhancement is larger and its permeability is further improved. The ratio of the corrugation amplitude to the corrugation length is found to be the key factor for permeability enhancement.
Highlights
The main advantage of membrane filtration for water treatment is that no chemical is needed in the filtration process, and, no chemical residuals are present in the water product; sludge, a by-product of the process, may be biodegradable and treatable
Numerical results via smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) show that the flow rate through a corrugated pore is higher than that of its counterpart through a smooth pore
The obtained flow rate is compared to the Poiseuille-induced approximation and the asymptotic solution for creeping flow through corrugated pores with a small corrugation amplitude
Summary
Membrane technology has been used in many industrial filtration and separation processes. Recently, it has been considered for large-scale water treatment. The main advantage of membrane filtration for water treatment is that no chemical is needed in the filtration process, and, no chemical residuals are present in the water product; sludge, a by-product of the process, may be biodegradable and treatable. Ceramic membranes with high mechanical strength, high thermal and chemical resistance, and high backwash recovery could have a long service life and reduced the replacement and operation costs It is considered as a promising material for water treatment.. Low Reynolds number flows through a corrugated capillary will be investigated via computational fluid dynamic simulations using smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) to study the membrane permeability with the corrugated pore structure. The rest of the paper is presented : Sec. II discusses the asymptotic solution for creeping flow through small corrugated pores, Sec. III presents an SPH model and the simulation setup for a low Reynolds number flow in corrugated pores, Sec. IV discusses the permeability of the corrugated pore membrane, and our concluding remarks are given in
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