• Membrane Journal
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.236-246
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• 2011

In this study, we used prepared a cylindrical module consisting 100 hollow fibers of commercialized (hydrophobic) polyethylene membrane of $0.4{\mu}m$ pore size and systematically studied performance of direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) and sweep gas membrane distillation (SGMD) in terms of variation of permeate flux and salt rejection with respect to temperature drop across the membrane, salt concentrations in feed, and flow rates of cooling water and sweep gas. SGMD was regarded as DCMD with a sweep gas layer between permeate-side membrane surface and cooling water. Sweep gas flow decreases the permeate flux from that of DCMD by providing an additional gas-layer resistance. We compared DCMD and SGMD performance by using mass balance with a fitting parameter (${\omega}$), indicating fraction of permeate flow rate.