Abstract
The paper presents the sweeping gas membrane distillation realised by using the capillary module (length 1.1 m and area 0.1 m2) without housing (module shell). During the tests, the feed was flowing inside the hydrophobic polypropylene membranes. The studies were performed for two variants of process: with pre-heating (313–330 K) and without heating of the feed (brines). Under low gas flow (0.005 m/s) the evaporation performance varied in the range of 0.15–0.25 L/m2h, depending on the relative humidity (42–63%) and the air temperature (293–300 K). The application of feed pre-heating to 330 K led to an increase in the evaporation performance to 2.4 L/m2h. The permeate flux increased by 60% when the air flow velocities between the capillaries increased to 1.8–2.5 m/s. Increasing the feed flow rate from 0.1 to 0.59 m/s led to increase the permeate flux about 20% for feed temperature 293–310 K, and over 55% for feed temperature higher than 323 K.
Highlights
The presented work considers the possibility of implementing the sweeping gas MD (SGMD) process in open modules, which are created by bundles of capillaries distributed symmetrically in gas-filled chambers
Open SGMD module can operate in conditions similar to natural evaporation or in chambers with forced gas flow
The performed tests confirmed that in the case of open modules, the feed temperature has a significant impact on the SGMD process performance
Summary
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