• Membrane Journal
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.83-89
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• 2018

Hydrophobic porous PVDF hollow fiber membranes for Membrane Distillation (MD) were fabricated by a combination of thermally induced phase separation (TIPS) and stretching. The purpose of this study is to investigate the shape and operating conditions of the module and the effect of piping size on parallel connection. In the optimization experiment of the vacuum membrane distillation module, the flux decreased as the packing density and length of the membrane in the module increased. When the module was connected vertically, it was confirmed that the nearest to the inlet of the vacuum port was the highest flux. In selecting the size of the header pipe of the module, it was confirmed that the maximum flux is shown when the inner diameter area of the hollow fiber membrane and the inner diameter area of the header pipe are the same. Also, it is necessary to find the optimal linear velocity because the higher the linear velocity in the module, the higher the flux, but the pressure acting on the module also increases proportionally.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.230-233
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• 2000

The aqueous glucose solution was separated by the membrane distillation with hydrophobic pojytetrafluoroethylcnc microfiltration membrane, The nominal pore size of the membrane was 0.2${\mu}m$. As the operating temperature increased from 40$^{\cirt}C$ to 70$^{\cirt}C$, the membrane permeation flux increased from 3.6 LMH to IL2 LlVIH, but the glucose rejection decreased 99% to 65% Also, the permeation nux and rejection decreased 25% and 6%, respectively, as the concentration of glucose solution increased 2 wt% to 4 wt%.

• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.56-60
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• 2013

Non-conventional oil resources such as shale gas are becoming increasingly important and have drawn the attention of several major oil companies all over the world. Nevertheless, the market-changing growth of shale gas production in recent years has resulted in the emergence of environmental and water management challenges. This is because the water used in the hydraulic fracturing process contains large amount of pollutants including ions, organics, and particles. Accordingly, the treatment of this flowback water from shale gas plant is regarded as one of the key technologies. In this study, we examined the feasibility of membrane distillation as a treatment technology for the water from shale gas plants. Direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) is a thermally-driven process based on a vaper pressure gradient across a hydrophobic membrane, allowing the treatment of feed waters containing high concentration of ions. Experiments were carried out put in the lab-scale under various conditions such as membrane types, temperature difference, flow rate and so on. Synthetic feed water was prepared and used based on the data from literature. The results indicated that DCMD is suitable for treating not only low-range flowback water but also high-range flowback water. Based on the theoretical calculation, DCMD could have over 80% of recovery. Nevertheless, organic pollutants such as oil and surfactant were identified as serious barriers for the application of MD. Further works will be required to develop the optimum pretreatment for this MD process.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.237-249
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• 2015

In this study we investigate a laboratory scale vacuum membrane distillation system to produce pure water from model oil in water emulsion. Experimental determination of liquid entry pressure (LEP) of a commercial Durapore$^{TM}$ GVPH flat sheet membrane using model emulsions in various oil concentrations has been carried out. Two different methods of liquid entry pressure determination - a frequently used, so-called static and a novel dynamic method - have been investigated. In case of static method, LEP value was found to be 2.3 bar. No significant effect of oil content on LEP was detected up to 3200 ppm. In contrast, LEP values determined with dynamic method showed strong dependence on the oil concentration of the feed and decreased from 2.0 bar to a spontaneous wetting at 0.2 bar in the range 0-250 ppm, respectively. Vacuum membrane distillation tests were also performed. The separation performance is evaluated in terms of flux behavior, total organic carbon removal and droplet size distribution of the feed and final retentate. No significant effect of oil content on the flux was found ($5.05{\pm}0.31kgm^{-2}h^{-1}$) up to 250 ppm, where a spontaneous wetting occurred. High separation performance was achieved along with the increasing oil concentration between 93.4-97.0%.

• Applied Science and Convergence Technology
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.248-253
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• 2014

Air Gap Membrane Distillation (AGMD) is one of several technologies that can be used to solve problems fresh water availability. AGMD exhibits several advantages, including low conductive heat loss and higher thermal efficiency, due to the presence of an air gap between the membrane and condensation wall. A previous study by Bhardwaj found that the condensation surface properties (materials and contact angle) affected the total collected fresh water in the solar distillation process. However, the process condition differences between solar distillation and AGMD might result in different condensation phenomena. In contrast, N. Miljkovic showed that a hydrophobic surface has higher condensation heat transfer. Moreover, to the best of our knowledge, there is no study that investigates the effect of condensation surface properties in AGMD to overall process performance (i.e. flux and thermal efficiency). Thus, in this study, we treated the AGMD condensation surface to make it hydrophobic or hydrophilic. The condensation surface could be made hydrophilic by immersing and boiling plate in deionized (DI) water, which caused the formation of hydrophilic aluminum hydroxide (AlOOH) nanostructures. Afterwards, the treated plate was coated using hexamethyldisiloxane (HMDSO) through plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD). The result indicated that condensation surface properties do not affect the permeate flux or thermal efficiency significantly. In general, the permeate flux and thermal efficiency for the treated plates were lower than those of the non-treated plate (pristine). However, at a 1 mm and 3 mm air gap, the treated plate outperformed the non-treated plate (pristine) in terms of permeate flux. Therefore, although surface wettability effect was not significant, it still provided a little influence.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.221-231
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• 2018

A new procedure to produce poly(vinylidene fluoride)/boron nitride hybrid membrane is presented for application in membrane distillation (MD) process. The influence of hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) incorporation on the performance of the polymeric membranes is studied through the present investigation. For this aim, h-BN nanopowders were successfully synthesized using the simple chemical vapor deposition (CVD) route and subsequent solvent treatments. The resulting h-BN nanosheets were blended with poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) solution. Then, the prepared composite solution was subjected to phase inversion process to obtain PVDF/h-BN hybrid membranes. Various examinations such as scanning electron microscopy (SEM), wettability, permeation flux, mechanical strength and liquid entry pressure (LEP) measurements are performed to evaluate the prepared membrane. Moreover, Air gap membrane distillation (AGMD) experiments were carried out to investigate the salt rejection performance and the durability of membranes. The results show that our hybrid PVDF/h-BN membrane presents higher water permeation flux (${\sim}18kg/m^2h$) compared to pristine PVDF membrane. In addition, the experimental data confirms that the prepared nanocomposite membrane is hydrophobic (water contact angle: ${\sim}103^{\circ}$), has a porous skin layer (>85%), as well competitive fouling resistance and operational durability. Furthermore, the total salt rejection efficiency was obtained for PVDF/h-BN membrane. The results prove that the novel PVDF/h-BN membrane can be easily synthesized and applied in MD process for salt rejection purposes.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.143-149
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• 2022

Membrane distillation (MD) has emerged as a sustainable desalination technology to solve the water and energy problems faced by the modern society. In particular, the surface wetting properties of the membrane have been recognized as a key parameter to determine the performance of the MD system. In this study, a novel surface modification technique was developed to induce a Janus-type hydrophilic/hydrophobic layer on the membrane surface. The hydrophilic layer was created on a porous PVDF membrane by vapor phase polymerization of the pyrrole monomer, forming a thin coating of polypyrrole on the membrane walls. A rigid polymeric coating layer was created without compromising the membrane porosity. The hydrophilic coating was then followed by the in-situ growth of siloxane nanoparticles, where the condensation of organosilane provided quick loading of hydrophobic layers on the membrane surface. The composite layers of dual coatings allowed systematic control of the surface wettability of porous membranes. By the virtue of the photothermal property of the hydrophilic polypyrrole layer, the desalination performance of the coated membrane was tested in a solar MD system. The wetting properties of the dual-layer were further evaluated in a direct-contact MD module, exploring the potential of the Janus membrane structure for effective and low-energy desalination.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.70-75
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• 2016

The reuse of wastewater is being diffused to manage and develop the water resources. Generally, the treated wastewater is discharged to the river after being treated to meet the effluent quality standard or reused for diverse uses through the reprocessing. And recently, as the reuse of the treated wastewater is activated, the technologies to utilize for the high quality water resources such as industrial water by reusing the wastewater with Membrane Distillation (MD) are under development. In this study, the direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) process has been applied to treat sewage discharge water for water reuse. The laboratory scale experiment was performed by using a hydrophobic PVDF membrane with the pore size of $0.22{\mu}m$. The influence of operating parameters, such as feed temperature, feed flow rate, feed concentration, on the permeate flux and rejection has been investigated. All filtration tests were conducted till the feed volume reached a concentration factor of 3.0. Thus, the operating period ranged between 19 hr and 49 hr depending on filtration performance. The results showed that above 92% of TN, TP, COD and TOC in the feed could be rejected regardless of an operating condition. The water flux was ranged from 13.8 to 20.3 LMH. The lowest flux was obtained at the operating condition with the feed temperature of $50^{\circ}C$ and feed flow velocity of 500 mL/min while the highest one was measured with $60^{\circ}C$ and 900 mL/min. When the concentration factor reached 3.0, water flux declined by approximately ranged from 14.5% to 33.3%. But the fouling in MD is almost fully reversible, with more than 90% recovery of permeate water flux following a DI water rinse without the addition of chemical cleaning reagents.

• Proceedings of the Membrane Society of Korea Conference
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.152-156
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• 2005

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.293-310
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• 2017

An ultrasonic assisting vacuum membrane distillation (VMD) system was designed to promote the heat and mass transfer in membrane distillation (MD) process. Both the effects of operating conditions and ultrasonic parameters to permeation flux in this process were investigated; the heat and mass transfer mechanism was also being discussed in this paper. The results showed that the performance of VMD process was improved significantly by ultrasonic assisting. The permeation flux was boosted at a certain feed solution temperature, pressure at permeate side and feed solution velocity whether or not to PP and PTFE. The results also indicated that ultrasonic power and frequency also was the key factor affecting the mass and transfer efficiencies. The feed side transfer coefficient ($K_f$), corresponding to ultrasonic power ($K_f=4.406-0.026{\times}P+7.824{\times}10^{-5}{\times}P^2$) and ultrasonic frequency ($K_f=0.941+0.598{\times}f-0.012{\times}f^2+6.283{\times}10^{-5}f^3$), was obtained and employed in the modeling of ultrasonic assisting VMD process. The modeling results showed that the calculated value of $K_f$ aligned with experimental results well. Both variations of temperature polarization coefficient (TPC) and concentration polarization coefficient (CPC) were studied based on the obtained data. The results showed that both TPC and CPC were improved obviously by the ultrasonic parameters.