Permeate flux in air gap membrane distillation for seawater desalination

Abstract

Membrane distillation (MD) is a thermally driven process since only vapor molecules are transported through porous hydrophobic membranes. This process leads to the separation into different desired phases. Air gap membrane distillation (AGMD) is considered one of the most used configurations of the membrane distillation. In this work, the impacts of NaCl concentration, porosity, and membrane pore size on the production of the flux have been investigated. The results have been carried using polynomial approximations through MATLAB. These latter are in agreement with the experiments.