Effect of temperature difference on performance of membrane crystallization-based membrane distillation system

Abstract

This study explores membrane distillation (MD) is suitable to recover pure water and to generate the supersaturation condition for the crystal formation. The system was carried out under a different temperature of feed solution. It was observed that the increase in the mass flux of product solution is due to the increase in the temperature difference between the feed and product solution. Although the temperature difference is important for the mass flux of product solution, it needs to consider a reasonable temperature difference. The highest rejection (%) was observed at feed temperature 60°C and it is easy to control. It was found that both surface crystallization and bulk crystallization influenced the flux decline of MD. Calcium sulfate crystals can be produced by MD crystallization with a growing crystal size distribution and average size of 100 μm.

Keywords:

• Seawater desalination
• RO brines
• Membrane distillation
• Calcium sulfate
• Crystallization

Acknowledgment

This research was supported by a grant from a Strategic Research Project (Water Reuse Technology for Smart Water Micro-Grids, Code # 2012-0016-1-1) funded by the Korea Institute of Construction Technology.

Notes

Presented at the International Conference on Desalination for the Environment, Clean Water and Energy, European Desalination Society, 23–26 April 2012, Barcelona, Spain