Seawater desalination with solar-energy-integrated vacuum membrane distillation system

Journal of Water Reuse and Desalination

Wang, Shixuan¹  Li, Jin¹  Xia, Dongsheng¹  Liu, Jianshe²  Wang, Fang² 

[1] Engineering Research Center for Clean Production of Textile Dyeing and Printing, Ministry of Education, Wuhan Textile University, Wuhan 430200, China;State Environmental Protection Engineering Center for Pollution Treatment and Control in Textile Industry, College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Donghua University, Shanghai 201620, China

关键词: desalination;    hollow-fiber membrane;    seawater;    solar energy;    vacuum membrane distillation;   

DOI  :  10.2166/wrd.2016.207

学科分类：工程和技术（综合）

来源: IWA Publishing

【 摘 要 】

This study designed and tested a novel type of solar-energy-integrated vacuum membrane distillation (VMD) system for seawater desalination under actual environmental conditions in Wuhan, China. The system consists of eight parts: a seawater tank, solar collector, solar cooker, inclined VMD evaporator, circulating water vacuum pump, heat exchanger, fresh water tank, and brine tank. Natural seawater was used as feed and a hydrophobic hollow-fiber membrane module was used to improve seawater desalination. The experiment was conducted during a typical summer day. Results showed that when the highest ambient temperature was 33 °C, the maximum value of the average solar intensity was 1,080 W/m2. The system was able to generate 36 kg (per m2 membrane module) distilled fresh water during 1 day (7:00 am until 6:00 pm), the retention rate was between 99.67 and 99.987%, and electrical conductivity was between 0.00276 and 0.0673 mS/cm. The average salt rejection was over 90%. The proposed VMD system shows favorable potential application in desalination of brackish waters or high-salt wastewater treatment, as well.

【 授权许可】

CC BY-NC-ND