• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.30-34
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• 2014

Membrane distillation (MD) is a thermal driven separation process in which separation a hydrophobic membrane is a barrier for the liquid phase, letting the vapor phase pass through the membrane pores. Therefore, a porous and hydrophobic membrane should be used in membrane distillation. MD cannot work if water penetrates into the pores of the membrane (membrane wetting). Accordingly, it is necessary to prevent wetting of MD membranes and to remove water inside the pores of the wetted membranes if possible. In this context, our study aimed to develop methods to recover wetted membranes in MD processes. Poly-vinylidene fluoride (PVDF) membranes were used in this study. A laboratory-scale direct contact MD (DCMD) system was used to examine the effect of operating parameters on wetting. For dewetting the wetted membranes, specific techniques including the use of high temperature air were applied. The performances of the membranes before and after dewetting were compared in terms of flux, salt rejection and liquid entry pressure(LEP). The surface morphology of dewetted membrane was confirmed by scanning electron microscope (SEM).

• Clean Technology
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.119-128
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• 2002

In the present study the membrane filtration characteristics of a commercially available synthetic water-based cutting oil through two kinds of ultrafiltration membranes (HF1-45-CM50 and HF1-43-CM100) with molecular weight cut-offs of 50,000 and 100,000, respectively, have been investigated in detail. Among these membranes, the hydrophilic one (HF1-45-CM50) was found to show a satisfactory result for both the permeate flux and the permeability of oil components, whereas the permeate flux obtained with the hydrophobic membrane (HF1-43-CM100) appears to be significantly low, indicating that synthetic cutting oil was easily wetted on the hydrophobic membrane surface and induced more membrane fouling. The effect of material characteristics of the membrane on the filtration characteristics was found to be much more significant compared with the mean pore size of the membrane. Backflushing by nitrogen gas was applied to reduce the formation of a gel layer and membrane fouling. With the hydrophilic membrane, the backflushing was found to increase the permeate flux, whereas the backflushing resulted in a decrease in flux for the hydrophobic membrane. The flux recovery was observed to be highest when the membranes fouled with waste synthetic cutting oil were immersed into a cleaning solution for more than 72 hours and then backflushed by nitrogen gas.

• 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%.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.35-43
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• 1995

For several years lots of attempts have been made to establish the liquid membrane-based techniques for separations of gas mixtures especially containing carbon dioxide. A more effective system to separate $CO_{2}$ from flue gases, a circulatory hollow-fiber membrane absorber(HFMA) consisting of absorption and desorption modules with vacuum mode, has been considered in this study. Gas-liquid mass transfer has been modeled on a membrane module with non-wetted hollow-fibers in the laminar flow regime. The influence of an absorbent flow rate on the separation performance of the circulatory HFMA can be predicted quantitatively by obtaining the $CO_{2}$ concentration profile in a tube side. The system of $CO_{2}/N_{2}$ binary gas mixture has been studied using pure water as an(inert) absorbent. As the absorbent flow rate is increased, the permeation flux(i.e., defined as permeation rate/membrane contact area) also increases. The enhanced selectivity compared to the previous results, on the other hand, shows the decreasing behavior. It has been found obviously that the permeation flux depends on the variations of pressure in gas phase of desorption module. From an accurate comparison with the results of conventional flat sheet membrane module, the advantageous permeability of this circulatory HFMA can be clearly ascertained as expected. Our efforts to the theoretical model will provide the basic analysis on the circulatory HFMA technique for a better design and process.