Mass Transfer Mechanism Within Commercial PTFE Membranes In Spacer-Filled Direct Contact Membrane Distillation

Abstract

The mass transfer mechanism within commercial PTFE membrane with various nominal pore sizes in spacer-filled direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) was determined. Mass fluxes and membrane permeability (MP) values for each commercial PTFE membrane were experimentally measured. The MP values increased insignificantly with 2.3% and 4% when the inlet temperature at feed side rose from 40⁰C to 50⁰C in different membrane pore sizes. All investigated mass transfer models except from Dusty Gas model were good enough to simulate the mass transfer inside smaller membrane pore sizes (0.22 µm, and 0.45 µm). Compared to combined diffusion model, the predicted mass fluxes using the overall mass transfer model including the contribution of Poiseuille flow obtained better agreement with experimental results for larger membrane pore size (1 µm). The mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) values for combined diffusion model were up to 16.5% compared with the Ding et al. model or Schofield et al. model (under 3%). Regarding the root mean square error (RMSE), the combined diffusion model obtains larger values than the mass transfer model considering the Poiseuille flow contribution. Consequently, the contribution of Poiseuille flow in mass transfer mechanism within smaller PTFE membrane pores (0.22 µm, and 0.45 µm) could be ignored, however, the contribution of Poiseuille flow to the overall mass transfer should be included in case of larger membrane pores (1 µm), or the case of applied transmembrane hydrostatic pressure.