Abstract
Nowadays, with the salient advantages of the seawater desalination process, membrane distillation (MD) technology has received increased interests to achieve desalination application. As a heat-based technology, by using the hydrophobic membrane, MD provides high efficiency in the desalination process of seawater, RO water and other solutes with high concentrations of dissolved solids. Besides, this is an alternative technology to significantly reduce the environmental impacts of traditional desalination technologies that commonly used, such as distillation or reverse osmosis. In many factors affecting the desalination capacity of the membrane distillation system, membrane module configuration has a strong influence in evaluating the economic and technical efficiency of the technology. This review aims to assess the suitability of the MD technology under different perspectives on the current types of membrane module configurations that include flat sheet, tubular, hollow fiber and spiral wound membrane. In addition, the evaluation of the advantages and disadvantages of the membrane module configurations will guide further studies to improve the shortcomings of existingMD technologies. Keywords: Membrane distillation; hollow fibre; flat sheet; spiral wound; tubular http://doi.org/10.35180/gse-2019-0001  
Highlights
In the world, there are more than 2.7 billion people worldwide who are facing water scarcity [1]
This review aims to assess the suitability of membrane distillation (MD) technology under different perspectives on the current types of membrane module configurations that include flat sheet, tubular, hollow fibre and spiral wound membranes
Plate and frame modules were usually produced in the form of plates or flat-sheets. These flat sheets were placed in the free spaces created by two rectangular frames. This membrane module is suitable for all four MD configurations including Direct Contact Membrane Distillation (DCMD), Air Gap Membrane Distillation (AGMD), Vacuum Membrane Distillation (VMD) and Sweeping Gas Membrane Distillation (SGMD) [42]
Summary
There are more than 2.7 billion people worldwide who are facing water scarcity [1]. In addition to these advantages, there are still some challenges for MD process, such as the problem of membrane fouling and membrane wetting [21], reduced permeate flux due to the polarization of concentration and temperature, and the difficulty in making full-scale [23-25]. These challenges are the main issues preventing industrial and commercial applications of membrane distillation. This review aims at evaluating the effectiveness of MD technology in terms of the different types of membranes, analyzing pros and cons of each type, making the most suitable selection in membrane module for future research on MD
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