Abstract
This study designed and tested a novel type of solar-energy-integrated vacuum membrane distillation (VMD) system for seawater desalination under actual environmental conditions in Wuhan, China. The system consists of eight parts: a seawater tank, solar collector, solar cooker, inclined VMD evaporator, circulating water vacuum pump, heat exchanger, fresh water tank, and brine tank. Natural seawater was used as feed and a hydrophobic hollow-fiber membrane module was used to improve seawater desalination. The experiment was conducted during a typical summer day. Results showed that when the highest ambient temperature was 33 °C, the maximum value of the average solar intensity was 1,080 W/m2. The system was able to generate 36 kg (per m2 membrane module) distilled fresh water during 1 day (7:00 am until 6:00 pm), the retention rate was between 99.67 and 99.987%, and electrical conductivity was between 0.00276 and 0.0673 mS/cm. The average salt rejection was over 90%. The proposed VMD system shows favorable potential application in desalination of brackish waters or high-salt wastewater treatment, as well.
Highlights
There is an urgent need for pure, clean drinking water in many countries across the globe
When the system is running, the quantity of feed seawater was set to 220 L, seawater inlet flow was set to 20 L/h, and the vacuum degree of the cold side was set to 0.095 Mpa
The aim of this study was to determine the feasibility of using solar-energy-integrated vacuum membrane distillation (VMD) to obtain fresh water from natural seawater during a typical day, and to test the performance of the system in terms of both the quality and quantity of fresh water produced
Summary
There is an urgent need for pure, clean drinking water in many countries across the globe. Water shortages have become a major environmental issue that is further impacted by global warming. Brackish water sources are not potable due to the content of dissolved salts and harmful bacteria. Many coastal areas have abundant seawater, but no safe drinking water. Distillation can be used to purify water supply, and is one of many techniques for desalinating seawater (Aybar et al ). With the rapid increase of the world population, desalination is increasingly considered to be necessary and feasible. By 2025, about 70% of the world’s population will face water shortage problems (Li et al ).
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