The Effect of Module Geometry on Heat and Mass Transfer in Membrane Distillation

Abstract

Abstract Some features of Direct Contact Membrane Distillation (DCMD), as one of the interesting membrane processes, has been studied in this effort. 3D computational fluid dynamic simulations were carried out to investigate some geometric parameter effects on flat sheet membrane module performance. It is obvious that using of baffles could noticeably improve the performance of the system. Hence, in present work, some baffle configurations were simulated and some parameters like temperature polarization, vapor flux and pressure drop through module length were investigated. The Simulation was performed based on neglecting viscous flow in membrane pores and dusty gas model was applied to predict vapor flux through membrane. Simulation results predicted that by using the new configuration we could have 40–60% vapor flux improvement (depend on inflow velocity) compared to a module without baffle. It was found that the average temperature polarization (TP), as a proper criteria, was higher for baffled one in all situations.