• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.10 no.5
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• pp.387-394
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• 2019

Membrane distillation (MD) is one of the water treatment processes which involves the momentum, heat and mass transfer through channels and membrane. In this study, CFD modeling has been used to simulate the heat and mass transfer in the direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD). Also, the effect of operating parameters on the water flux is investigated. The result shows a good agreement with the experimental result. Results indicated that, while feed temperature is increasing in the feed side, water flux improves in the permeate side. Since higher velocity leads to the higher mixing and turbulence in the feed channel, water flux rises due to this increase in the feed velocity. Moreover, results revealed that temperature polarization coefficient is rising as flow rate (velocity) increases and it is decreasing while the feed temperature increases. Lastly, the thermal efficiency of direct contact membrane distillation is defined, and results confirm that thermal efficiency improves while feed temperature increases. Also, flow rate increment results in enhancement of thermal efficiency.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.293-310
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• 2017

An ultrasonic assisting vacuum membrane distillation (VMD) system was designed to promote the heat and mass transfer in membrane distillation (MD) process. Both the effects of operating conditions and ultrasonic parameters to permeation flux in this process were investigated; the heat and mass transfer mechanism was also being discussed in this paper. The results showed that the performance of VMD process was improved significantly by ultrasonic assisting. The permeation flux was boosted at a certain feed solution temperature, pressure at permeate side and feed solution velocity whether or not to PP and PTFE. The results also indicated that ultrasonic power and frequency also was the key factor affecting the mass and transfer efficiencies. The feed side transfer coefficient ($K_f$), corresponding to ultrasonic power ($K_f=4.406-0.026{\times}P+7.824{\times}10^{-5}{\times}P^2$) and ultrasonic frequency ($K_f=0.941+0.598{\times}f-0.012{\times}f^2+6.283{\times}10^{-5}f^3$), was obtained and employed in the modeling of ultrasonic assisting VMD process. The modeling results showed that the calculated value of $K_f$ aligned with experimental results well. Both variations of temperature polarization coefficient (TPC) and concentration polarization coefficient (CPC) were studied based on the obtained data. The results showed that both TPC and CPC were improved obviously by the ultrasonic parameters.