Mass transfer in hollow fiber membrane contactor: Computational fluid dynamics determination of the shell side resistance

摘要

In this work, a fully virtual workflow describing mass transfer at the fiber scale inside of a hollow fiber membrane contactor was used to access overall contactor performances. To do so, fiber geometry was described using limited information. Then a CFD code was used to compute fluid and solute concentration transport over a range of Reynolds number (1 to 400), with no adjustable parameters. Those results compared successfully with a correlation established over numerous experiments in resembling cases. Then, fiber scale CFD results were broadcast to the contactor scale using porous medium formulation. Validation against contactor scale experiments was successful. Finally this workflow was compared to two other numerical approaches, including one relying on case-specific correlation. While all produced satisfactory results, this workflow performed slightly better. Results reported emerge quasi ex nihilo, solely considering geometrical properties of the contactor at the fiber scale. Thus, the proposed procedure paves the way toward in silico contactor conception, testing and up-scalling.