สุรพิชญ์ ศรีสุริฉัน. Flux Decline and Transport Resistances in Direct Contact Membrane Distillation Process. Master's Degree(Chemical Engineering). King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi. : King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi, 2005.
Flux Decline and Transport Resistances in Direct Contact Membrane Distillation Process
Abstract:
The objectives of this thesis are to elucidate flux decline, transport mechanisms and resistances in direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) process.
Four sets of experiments were conducted using a flat sheet module with DI water, humic acid solution, silica suspension, and dye solutions as feeds.
The membranes employed were 0.22 ?m PVDF and 0.2 ?m PTFE. The first set (DI water experiment) was designed to study the heat and mass
transfer in DCMD. Humic acid solution was employed as feed in the second set of experiment, which aimed to study the fouling mechanism and the
influence of fouling layer on DCMD. Silica suspension was the feed in the third set, which was performed to reveal the effect of operating parameters
on fouling. In the last set, dye solutions were chosen to be the model feed to study for the potential of DCMD on wastewater treatment.
In the DI water experiment, the mass transfer models based on Dusty gas model were applied to fit the flux data. The molecular diffusion was found to
be the mass transfer mechanism in the membrane. Both mass and heat flux increased with feed temperature and crossflow velocity. The major resistance
of the system was found to be in the feed boundary layer at low crossflow velocity and in the membrane at high crossflow velocity.
When humic acid solution containing CaCl2 was employed as feed, the flux characteristic can be described by cake filtration model. The deposition of
humic acid coagulate as a cake layer presented additional heat transfer resistance to the system. This decreased the temperature at the membrane surface
(feed side). Thus, the driving force was reduced, and resulted in flux decline. The fouling resistance increased significantly with time. The resistance of
fouling layer was significant with the value comparable to the resistance of the membrane at the end of the experiment.
In membrane distillation of silica suspension, the cause of flux decline was the cake layer of silica particles formed on the membrane surface. The rate and
extent of flux decline were found to depend mainly on the rate of deposition and rate of removal of silica particles. Operating at high temperature led to
the higher flux, and also larger amount of silica particles on the membrane surface. Similarly, the higher the silica concentration, the higher the deposition
rate, and the higher the rate and extent of flux decline. Increase in crossflow velocity enhanced the shear stress and consequently the removal rate. As a
result, both rate and extent of flux decline were decreased. The removal rate was found to be proportional to the feed crossflow velocity to the power of
0.80.
Application of DCMD for treatment of dye effluent gave total rejection and the water flux ranging between 36 54 L/m2.hr, which was appealing
compared to nanofiltration/reverse osmosis. Flux decline was found when the PVDF membrane was employed. Cleaning with both acidic and basic
solutions were not effective. On the contrary, flux decline was negligible for PTFE membrane and cleaning was not required.