• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.11 no.5
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• pp.353-361
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• 2020

The present study deals with a numerical investigation of heat and mass transfer in a Sweeping Gas Membrane Distillation (SGMD) used for desalination. The governing equations expressing the conservation of mass, momentum, energy and species with coupled boundary conditions were solved numerically. The slip boundary condition applied on the feed saline solution-hydrophobic membrane interface is taken into consideration showing its effects on profiles and process parameters.The numerical model was validated with available experimental data and was found to be in good agreement particularly when the slip condition is considered. The results of the simulations highlighted the effect of slip boundary condition on the velocity and temperature distributions as well as the process effectiveness. They showed in particular that as the slip length increases, the permeate flux of fresh water and process thermal efficiency rise.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.11 no.5
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• pp.363-374
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• 2020

Membrane distillation (MD) is a process used for water desalination. However, its commercialization is still hindered by its increased specific cost of production. In this work, several process configurations comprising Direct Contact and Permeate Gap distillation membrane units (PGMD/DCMD) were investigated to maximize the production rate and consequently reduce the specific water cost. The analysis was based on a cost model and an experimentally validated MD model. It was revealed that the best achievable water cost was approximately 5.1 $/㎥ with a production rate of 8000 ㎥/y. This cost can be further decreased to approximately 2 $/㎥ only if the heating and cooling energies are free of cost. Therefore, it is necessary to decrease the MD capital investment to produce pure water at economical prices.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.71-86
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• 2016

The present study deals with a numerical simulation for the transport phenomena in three configurations of Membrane Distillation (Air Gap, Direct Contact and Sweeping Gas Membrane Distillation) usually used for desalination in order to make an objective comparison between them under the same operating conditions. The models are based on the conservation equations for the mass, momentum, energy and species within the feed saline and cooling solutions as well as on the mass and energy balances on the membrane sides. The theoretical model was validated with available data and was found in good agreement. DCMD configuration provided the highest pure water production while SGMD shows the highest thermal efficiency. Process parameters' impact on each configuration are also presented and discussed.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.6 no.6
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• pp.477-488
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• 2015

This study demonstrates that low pressure membranes are the ideal choice for industrial and/or municipal wastewater treatment by showing some promising experimental results, understanding different membrane filtration models, studying the potential of membrane bioreactors (MBRs), considering ceramic membranes fabrication and illustrating the role of nanotechnology in membranes. Cost study calculations are included to determine the treatment cost as well as the initial cost of various membrane types. Results showed that integrated membranes are preferred over MBR in case of average capacities. However, higher capacity situations are the most economical choice for MBR. It is shown that the least treatment cost in MBR was about $0.13/m^3$. However, the $0.13/m^3$ is the theoretical cost which is very small compared to the actual average MBR treatment cost of $0.5/m^3$.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.77-98
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• 2012

A two-dimensional (2D) steady state numerical model of concentration polarisation (CP) phenomena in a membrane channel has been developed using the commercially available computational fluid dynamics (CFD) package CFX (Ansys, Inc., USA). The model incorporates the transmembrane pressure (TMP), axially variable permeate flux, variable diffusivity and viscosity, and osmotic pressure effects. The model has been verified against several benchmark analytical and empirical solutions from the membrane literature. Additionally, the model is able to predict the rejection of an arbitrary solute by the membrane using a pore model, given some basic knowledge of the geometry of the solute molecule or particle, and the membrane pore geometry. This allows for predictive design of membrane systems without experimental determination of the membrane rejection for the specified operating conditions. A demonstration of the model is presented against experimental results for two uncharged test compounds (sucrose and PEG1000) from the literature. The model will be extended to incorporate charge effects, transient simulations, three-dimensional (3D) geometry and turbulent effects in future work.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.267-279
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• 2011

At steady state, the simultaneous transport of sulphuric acid and nickel sulphate through an anion-exchange membrane Neosepta-AFN (Astom Corporation, Tokyo, Japan) was investigated in a two-compartment counter-current dialyzer with single passes. The transport was quantified by the recovery yield of acid, rejection of salt and four phenomenological coefficients, which were correlated with the acid and salt concentrations in the feed. The phenomenological coefficients were determined by the numerical integration of the basic differential equations describing the concentration profiles of the components in the dialyzer. This integration was combined with an optimizing procedure. The experiments proved that the acid recovery yield is in the limits from 63 to 91 %, while salt rejection is in the limits from 79 to 97 % in the dependence on the volumetric liquid flow rate and composition of the feed.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.225-237
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• 2011

In this study, response of reversibility of membrane flux during chemically enhanced backwash (CEB) to changes in filtration time, filtration flux and coagulant concentration dosing during ultrafiltration (UF) process was investigated using a regression model. The model was developed via empirical modelling approach using response surface methodology. In developing the model, statistically designed UF experiments were conducted and the results compared with the model output. The results showed that the performance of CEB, evaluated in terms of the reversibility of the membrane flux, depends strongly on the changes in coagulant concentration dosage and the filtration flux. Also the response of the reversibility of membrane flux during CEB is independent of the filtration time. The variance ratio, VR << $F_{value}$ and $R^2$ = 0.98 obtained from the cross-validation experiments indicate perfect agreement of the model output with experimental results and also testify to the validity and suitability of the model to predict reversibility of the membrane flux during CEB in UF operation.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.221-233
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• 2014

Simulations were conducted to predict supersaturation along Reverse Osmosis (RO) modules for seawater desalination. The modeling approach is based on the use of conservation principles and chemical equilibria equations along RO modules. Full Pitzer ion interactive forces model for concentrated solutions was implement to calculate activity coefficients. An average rejection rate for all ionic species was considered. Supersaturation has been used to assess scaling. Supersaturations with respect to all calcium carbonate forms and calcium sulfate were calculated up to 50% recovery rate in seawater RO desalination. The results for four different seawater qualities are shown. The predictions were in a good agreement with the experimental results.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.369-380
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• 2017

Performance evaluation of four commercially available tubular membranes (AFC 80, AFC 30, PU 608, ES 404) was accomplished in self-assembled membrane testing unit. Effects of varying transmembrane pressure, feed concentration and anion type were investigated. Aqueous solutions of salts such as calcium chloride, calcium sulfate, tin chloride and tin sulfate were prepared for this study. It was noted that the investigated parameters e.g., pressure and concentration had significant effects on membrane's performance. Nevertheless, anion type effectively played its role in the rejection of salts since salt having SO4-2 anions had a better rejection than the salts containing Cl-1. It is observed that rejection was dominated by Donnon exclusion for strongly charged nanofiltration membranes whereas for weakly charged ultrafiltration membranes, size exclusion was the key mechanism to reject the ions.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.129-136
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• 2018

In this contribution, the control of multivariable reverse osmosis (RO) desalination plant using proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controllers is presented. First, feed-forward compensators are designed using simplified decoupling method and then the PID controllers are tuned for flux (flow-rate) and conductivity (salinity). The tuning of PID controllers is accomplished by minimization of the integral of squared error (ISE). The ISEs are minimized using a recently proposed algorithm named as teacher-learner-based-optimization (TLBO). TLBO algorithm is used due to being simple and being free from algorithm-specific parameters. A comparative analysis is carried out to prove the supremacy of TLBO algorithm over other state-of-art algorithms like particle swarm optimization (PSO), artificial bee colony (ABC) and differential evolution (DE). The simulation results and comparisons show that the purposed method performs better in terms of performance and can successfully be applied for tuning of PID controllers for RO desalination plants.