Advances in Membrane Distillation for Water Desalination and Purification Applications

Camacho, Lucy Mar; Dumée, Ludovic F.; Zhang, Jianhua; Li, Junde; Duke, Mikel; Gómez, Juan David; Gray, Stephen

doi:10.3390/w5010094

Cited by 593 publications

(340 citation statements)

References 295 publications

(532 reference statements)

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“…In the last few years, MD has emerged with numerous commercially oriented devices and novel process integrations to try to match MED thermal efficiencies. The most notable organisations specialising in MD modules or high efficiency systems are: Fraunhofer ISE (AGMD), Memstill and Aquastill (AGMD), Scarab (AGMD), Memsys (vacuum enhanced multi effect AGMD) [20]. The thermal energy required through Memstill's trials, is as low as 56 to 100 kWh/m 3 of water produced (GOR up to 11.2).…”

Section: Membrane Distillation Progress and Technological Challengesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Economic analysis of desalination technologies in the context of carbon pricing, and opportunities for membrane distillation

et al. 2013

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The economics membrane distillation (MD) and common seawater desalination methods including multi effect distillation (MED), multistage flash (MSF) and reverse osmosis (RO) are compared. MD also has the opportunity to enhance RO recovery, demonstrated experimentally on RO concentrate from groundwater. MD concentrated RO brine to 361,000 mg/L total dissolved solids, an order of magnitude more saline than typical seawater, validating this potential. On a reference 30,000 m 3 /day plant, MD has similar economics with other thermal desalination techniques, but RO is more cost effective. With the inclusion of a carbon tax of $23 per tonne carbon in Australia, RO remained the economically favourable process. However, when heat comes at a cost equivalent of 10% of the value of the steam needed for MD and MED, under a carbon tax regime, the cost of MD reduces to $0.66/m 3 which is cheaper than RO and MED. The favour to MD was due to lower material cost. On low thermally, high electrically efficient installations MD can desalinate water from low temperature (<50°C) heat sources at a cost of $0.57/m 3 . Our assessment has found that generally, MD opportunities occur when heat is available at low cost, while extended recovery of RO brine is also viable.

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Section: Membrane Distillation Progress and Technological Challengesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The standard thermal energy required to operate an MD system is 628 kWh/m 3 [20]. This value equates to a performance ratio (PR), or gain output ratio (GOR) of 1, being the mass ratio of water produced to the amount of steam energy (i.e., latent heat) fed to the process.…”

Section: Membrane Distillation Progress and Technological Challengesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Economic analysis of desalination technologies in the context of carbon pricing, and opportunities for membrane distillation

et al. 2013

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“…Membrane distillation (MD) is a thermally driven, scalable desalination process [11,12] that has been identified as a candidate technology for modular desalination of high-salinity brines [13,14,15]. Since MD can operate at low feed temperatures, it has been successfully coupled with a range of renewable energy sources [16,17,18,19].…”

Section: Context: Desalination Up To High Salinitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Energy efficiency of membrane distillation up to high salinity: Evaluating critical system size and optimal membrane thickness

et al. 2018

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This study presents a comprehensive analytical framework to design efficient single-stage membrane distillation (MD) systems for the desalination of feed streams up to high salinity. MD performance is quantified in terms of energy efficiency (represented as a gained output ratio, or GOR) and vapor flux, both of which together affect the specific cost of pure water production. Irrespective of the feed salinity, permeate or conductive gap MD (P/CGMD) performs better than direct contact MD (DCMD) when the heat transfer resistance of the gap (in P/CGMD) is lower than that of the external heat exchanger in DCMD. Air gap MD's (AGMD) better performance relative to the other configurations at high salinity and large system area can be explained in terms of its thicker 'effective membrane', which includes the air-gap region. CGMD and DCMD employing a thick membrane are also resilient to high salinity, similar to AGMD, while not being susceptible to the gap flooding that can harm AGMD's performance. A method is described to simultaneously determine the cost-optimal membrane thickness and system size as a function of the ratio of specific costs of heat energy and module area. At low salinity and small system size, GOR rises and flux declines with an increase in membrane area. For salty feed solutions, there exists a critical system size beyond which GOR also begins to decline. Since both GOR and flux are lower, no economic rationale favors operation above this critical size, irrespective of the costs of thermal energy and system area. A closed-form analytical expression for this critical system area is derived as a function of the feed salinity and two dimensionless ratios of heat transfer resistances within the MD module.Keywords: membrane distillation, high salinity, energy efficiency, system size, optimal membrane thickness * Corresponding author: lienhard@mit.

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“…The driving force is hence the vapour pressure difference between and , which is less than the vapour pressure difference between and . The process is otherwise called temperature polarization [9].…”

Section: Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Flux Prediction in Direct Contact Membrane Distillation

Lawal¹,

Khalifa²

2014

IJMMM

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Abstract-Membrane distillation (MD) is a potential mean of water desalination. MD is a thermally driven desalination technology that has been employed in four basic configurations. One of these configuration is Direct Contact Membrane Distillation (DCMD). In DCMD, both hot and cold solution is maintained in direct contact with micro porous hydrophobic membrane material. Heat and mass transfer analysis was performed on DCMD. Based on Kinetic theory of gas, the performance of different models of membrane permeability (coefficient) was investigated under different DCMD operating parameters (feed temperature, coolant temperature and feed flow rate). Knudsen number provides the guideline in identifying the type of model of mass transfer to be considered under any given experimental conditions.Results revealed that for a given pore size under the same simulation and experimental conditions, Transition (KnudsenMolecular diffusion) type of flow model predictions is in good agreement with the experimental results. Hence the best model to be consider for flux prediction in DCMD. The effect of membrane pore size was also studied. Results showed that permeate flux increases with increase in pore size up to the critical pore condition where the flux prediction remain constant (unchanged).Index Terms-Desalination, direct contact membrane distillation, flux prediction, hydrophobic membrane material.

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Advances in Membrane Distillation for Water Desalination and Purification Applications

Cited by 593 publications

References 295 publications

Economic analysis of desalination technologies in the context of carbon pricing, and opportunities for membrane distillation

Economic analysis of desalination technologies in the context of carbon pricing, and opportunities for membrane distillation

Energy efficiency of membrane distillation up to high salinity: Evaluating critical system size and optimal membrane thickness

Flux Prediction in Direct Contact Membrane Distillation

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