A Study on the Thermal Characteristics of Vacuum Membrane Distillation Module

This study was accomplished to get the foundation design data of VMD(Vacuum Membrane Distillation) system for Solar Thermal VMD plant. VMD experiment was designed to evaluate thermal performance of VMD using PVDF(polyvinylidene fluoride) hollow fiber hydrophobic membranes. The total membrane surface area in a VMD module is $5.3m^2$. Experimental equipments to evaluate VMD system consists of various parts such as VMD module, heat exchanger, heater, storage tank, pump, flow meter, micro filter. The experimental conditions to evaluate VMD module were salt concentration, temperature, flow rate of feed sea water. Salt concentration of feed water were used by aqueous NaCl solutions of 25g/l, 35g/l and 45g/l concentration. As a result, increase in permeate flux of VMD module is due to the increasing feed water temperature and feed water flow rate. Also, decrease in permeate flux of VMD module is due to increasing salinity of feed water. VMD module required about 590 kWh/day of heating energy to produce $1m^3/day$ of fresh water.

VMD 모듈의 열성능 특성 연구