TY - JOUR
T1 - Pilot plant studies of novel membranes and devices for direct contact membrane distillation-based desalination
AU - Song, Liming
AU - Ma, Zidu
AU - Liao, Xiaohong
AU - Kosaraju, Praveen B.
AU - Irish, James R.
AU - Sirkar, Kamalesh K.
N1 - Funding Information:
We acknowledge the funding of the project by Desalination and Water Purification Research and Development Program of the Bureau of Reclamation, Denver, CO under the following contract 04-FC-81-1037. United Technologies Research Center (UTRC) provided considerable assistance in building and running of the pilot plant on a daily basis and in carrying out associated analytical support activities.
PY - 2008/10/15
Y1 - 2008/10/15
N2 - A small pilot plant for direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) based desalination was built and operated successfully on a daily basis for 3 months. The operation employed hot brine at 64-93°C and distillate at 20-54°C. The hot brine was either city water, city water containing salt at the level of 3.5, 6 or 10%, or sea water trucked in from Long Island Sound, CT. One to ten horizontal crossflow hollow fiber membrane modules each having either 2448 or 2652 hollow fibers and 0.61 or 0.66 m2 surface area were combined in various configurations to study the plant performance. The highest water vapor flux of 55 kg/(m2 h) was achieved with two modules in series; the flux varied between 15 and 33 kg/(m2 h) for configurations employing 6-10 modules. The highest distillate production rate achieved was 0.62 gallons per minute (gpm). The membrane modules never showed any sign of distillate contamination by salt. The plant operated successfully with a very limited flux reduction at salt concentrations up to 19.5% from sea water. A mathematical model was successfully developed to describe the performance of the pilot plant with multiple crossflow modules in different test configurations.
AB - A small pilot plant for direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) based desalination was built and operated successfully on a daily basis for 3 months. The operation employed hot brine at 64-93°C and distillate at 20-54°C. The hot brine was either city water, city water containing salt at the level of 3.5, 6 or 10%, or sea water trucked in from Long Island Sound, CT. One to ten horizontal crossflow hollow fiber membrane modules each having either 2448 or 2652 hollow fibers and 0.61 or 0.66 m2 surface area were combined in various configurations to study the plant performance. The highest water vapor flux of 55 kg/(m2 h) was achieved with two modules in series; the flux varied between 15 and 33 kg/(m2 h) for configurations employing 6-10 modules. The highest distillate production rate achieved was 0.62 gallons per minute (gpm). The membrane modules never showed any sign of distillate contamination by salt. The plant operated successfully with a very limited flux reduction at salt concentrations up to 19.5% from sea water. A mathematical model was successfully developed to describe the performance of the pilot plant with multiple crossflow modules in different test configurations.
KW - Composite porous membrane
KW - Crossflow hollow fiber module
KW - Membrane distillation-based desalination
KW - Pilot plant
KW - Sea water
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U2 - 10.1016/j.memsci.2008.05.079
DO - 10.1016/j.memsci.2008.05.079
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:54049113780
SN - 0376-7388
VL - 323
SP - 257
EP - 270
JO - Journal of Membrane Science
JF - Journal of Membrane Science
IS - 2
ER -