Parametric study for MD module design for electroplating industry using numerical simulations

摘要

Membrane Distillation (MD) is a thermally driven separation technology for liquid streams. It uses a hydrophobic membrane to retain the feed water on one side while gas molecules can travel through the pores of the membrane and be collected on the other side. The driving force of the technology is the partial vapour pressure difference induced through a temperature gradient, between both sides of the membrane. MD is capable of using low-grade heat (< 100°C) and treating highly concentrated solutions. The applications of MD are diverse (e.g. desalination, fruit juice concentration, waste water, etc.) however the technology hasn't been widely implemented yet. One of the main reasons for that is the lack of scaled-up module designs. In fact, the module design is dependent on the application of the technology and has to be optimized according to the operation parameters. In this paper, we present i) a validated modelling tool to predict and optimize the main DCMD (Direct Contact MD) module design parameters (e.g. membrane area, velocity, trans-membrane flux and heat consumption) and, ii) a parametrical case-study where the software tool (developed in EES) was used to design a DCMD module for the treatment of electro-plating industry process water.