Development and pilot testing of full-scale membrane distillation modules for deployment of waste heat

Membrane distillation is an attractive technology for extracting fresh water from seawater. Newly developed modules have been used in pilot tests and bench scale tests to demonstrate the potential of producing excellent product water quality in a single step, little need for water pretreatment and a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Desalination 2013-08, Vol.323, p.55-65
Main Authors: Jansen, A.E., Assink, J.W., Hanemaaijer, J.H., van Medevoort, J., van Sonsbeek, E.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Brine
Desalination
Mass transfer
Membrane distillation
Pilot tests
Ultrapure water
Waste heat
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Summary:Membrane distillation is an attractive technology for extracting fresh water from seawater. Newly developed modules have been used in pilot tests and bench scale tests to demonstrate the potential of producing excellent product water quality in a single step, little need for water pretreatment and a thermal energy requirement of approximately 520MJ/m3 water. Evaluations for large scale applications in the future, using low cost waste heat and assuming an energy requirement of 140–230MJ/m3, are indicating operational costs competitive to conventional desalination techniques, such as reversed osmosis and multi-effect distillation. ► Salt separation factors above 10,000 have been obtained in large pilot tests. ► Thicker membranes reduce internal heat losses and improve energy efficiencies. ► Degassing the influent improves the permeance, but was sometimes not found. ► Modeling of the permeance showed unused module areas at low channel velocities. ► The potential of low cost desalination has been shown in various cost evaluations.
ISSN:0011-9164
1873-4464
DOI:10.1016/j.desal.2012.11.030