Porous condenser for thermally driven membrane processes: Gravity-independent operation

•Porous condenser for thermally driven membrane processes was proposed.•Gravity-independent operation of membrane module with porous condenser was proven.•The concept was demonstrated for two applications: water desalination and removal of butanol from its solution in water. New thermally driven pro...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Separation and purification technology 2016-10, Vol.171, p.191-196
Main Authors: Volkov, A.V., Novitsky, E.G., Borisov, I.L., Vasilevsky, V.P., Volkov, V.V.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aqueous solutions
Coolants
Fluxes
Gravity-independent
Membrane distillation
Membranes
Orientation
Porous condenser
Purification
Rejection
Separation
Thermopervaporation
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Summary:•Porous condenser for thermally driven membrane processes was proposed.•Gravity-independent operation of membrane module with porous condenser was proven.•The concept was demonstrated for two applications: water desalination and removal of butanol from its solution in water. New thermally driven processes configuration based on the porous condenser (instead of non-porous cooling plate) and using permeate as a coolant was suggested and successfully proven for two processes: (i) membrane distillation with porous condenser (MD-PC) tested for the desalination of model NaCl solutions of 5–40g/l and (ii) thermopervaporation with porous condenser (TPV-PC) tested for the removal of n-butanol from its 1wt.% aqueous solution. In both cases, the experiments were carried out at different orientations of the membrane module. No noticeable difference for MD-PC and TPV-PC performance, including the worst case scenario for conventional AGMD when the membrane was located horizontally under the air gap, was observed. In addition, in contrast to the conventional AGMD, stable MD-PC, and TPV-PC performance was demonstrated at extremely low air gap width of 0.1–1mm. The water fluxes up to 21kg/m2h and salt rejection higher than 99% were attained for MD-PC, and the total flux of 1kg/m2h for TPV-PC separation of 1wt.% butanol-water mixture was obtained which is comparable with the conventional vacuum PV. Potential applications for the new thermally driven processes such as space and marine can be identified.
ISSN:1383-5866
1873-3794
DOI:10.1016/j.seppur.2016.07.038