A Framework for Better Understanding and Enhancing Direct Contact Membrane Distillation (DCMD) in Terms of Module Design, Cost Analysis and Energy Required

摘要

Water is becoming scarcer and several authors have highlighted the upcoming problem ofhigher water salinity and the difficulty of treating and discharging water. Moreover,current discoveries of problems with chemicals that have been used for pretreating orpost-treating water alerted scientists to research better solutions to treat water. Membranedistillation (MD) is a promising technology that might replace current processes as it haslower pretreatment requirements combined with a tremendous ability to treat a widerange of feed sources while producing very high product quality. If it enters the market, itwill have a big influence on all products, from food industry to spaceflight. However,there are several problems which make MD a hot topic for research. One of them is thequestion about the real cost of MD in terms of heating feed and cooling distillate overtime with respect to product quantity and quality. In this work, extensive heating andcooling analyses are covered to answer this question in order to enhance the MD process.Results show energy cost to produce water and the main source of energy loss for directcontact membrane distillation (DCMD), and several suggestions are made in order tobetter understand and hence enhance the process.