Transport phenomena and fouling in vacuum enhanced direct contact membrane distillation Experimental and modelling.pdfVIP

Separation and Puri?cation Technology 172 (2017) 285–295 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Separation and Puri?cation Technology journal homepage: /locate/seppur Transport phenomena and fouling in vacuum enhanced direct contact membrane distillation: Experimental and modelling Gayathri Naidu a, Wang Geun Shim a,b, Sanghyun Jeong a,c, YoungKwon Choi a, Noreddine Ghaffour c, Saravanamuthu Vigneswaran a,? a Faculty of Engineering, University of Technology Sydney (UTS), P.O. Box 123, Broadway, NSW 2007, Australia b Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, Sunchon National University, 255 Jungang-ro, Sucheon-si, Jellanam-do 57922, Republic of Korea c King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Water Desalination and Reuse Center (WDRC), Biological and Environmental Science Engineering (BESE), Thuwal 23955-6900, Saudi Arabia article info Article history: Received 29 May 2016 Received in revised form 19 August 2016 Accepted 19 August 2016 Available online 24 August 2016 Keywords: Fouling Reverse osmosis concentrate Transfer mechanism Vacuum enhanced direct contact membrane distillation abstract The application of vacuum to direct contact membrane distillation (vacuum enhanced direct contact membrane distillation, V-DCMD) removed condensable gasses and reduced partial pressure in the membrane pores, achieving 37.6% higher ?ux than DCMD at the same feed temperature. Transfer mechanism and temperature distribution pro?le in V-DCMD were studied. The empirical ?ux decline (EFD) model represented fouling pro?les of V-DCMD. In a continuous V-DCMD operation with moderate temperature (55 °C) and permeate pressure (300 mbar) for treating wastewater ROC, a ?ux of 16.0 ± 0.3 L/m2 h and high quality distillate were achieved with water ?ushing, showing the suitability of V-DCMD for ROC treatment. ó 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Membrane distillation (MD) is a thermal membrane process based on the principle of vapor–liquid equilibr