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Highly Saline Water Desalination Using Direct Contact Membrane Distillation (DCMD): Experimental and Simulation Study

The path for water molecules transported across a membrane in real porous membranes has been considered to be a constant factor in the membrane distillation (MD) process (i.e., constant tortuosity); as such, its effect on membrane performance at various operating conditions has been ignored by researchers. Therefore, a simultaneous heat and mass transfer model throughout the direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) module was developed in this study by taking into account the hypothetical path across the membrane as a variable factor within the operating conditions because it exhibits the changes to the mass transfer resistance across the membrane under the DCMD run. The DCMD process was described by the developed model using a system of nonlinear equations and solved numerically by MATLAB software. The performance of the poly-tetra-fluoroethylene (PTFE) membrane was examined to treat 200 g/L NaCl saline at various operating conditions. The simulation results in the present work showed that the hypothetical proposed path across the membrane has a variable value and was affected by changing the feed temperature and feed concentration. The results estimated by the developed model showed an excellent conformity with the experimental results. The salt rejection remained high (greater than 99.9%) in all cases. The temperature polarization coefficient for the DCMD ranged between 0.88 and 0.967, and the gain output ratio (GOR) was 0.893. The maximum thermal efficiency of the system was 84.5%.