Dataset Information

Highly Efficient Water Harvesting with Optimized Solar Thermal Membrane Distillation Device.

ABSTRACT: Water distillation with solar thermal technology could be one of the most promising way to address the global freshwater scarcity, with its low cost and minimum environmental impacts. However, the low liquid water productivity, which is caused by the heat loss and inadequate heat utilization in solar-thermal conversion process, hinders its practical application. Here, a compact solar-thermal membrane distillation system with three structure features: highly localized solar-thermal heating, effective cooling strategy, and recycling the latent heat, is proposed. The steam generation rate is 0.98 kg m-2 h-1 under solar illumination of 1 kW m-2 in the open system, while the liquid water productivity could be 1.02 kg m-2 h-1 with the solar efficiency up to 72% with a two-level device. The outdoor experiments show a water productivity of 3.67 kg m-2 with salt rejection over 99.75% in one cloudy day. These results demonstrate an easy and high-efficiency way for water distillation, especially suitable for household solar water purification.

SUBMITTER: Xue G

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6607162 | biostudies-other | 2018 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

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Highly Efficient Water Harvesting with Optimized Solar Thermal Membrane Distillation Device.

Xue Guobin G Chen Qian Q Lin Shizhe S Duan Jiangjiang J Yang Peihua P Liu Kang K Li Jia J Zhou Jun J

Global challenges (Hoboken, NJ) 20180524 5-6

Water distillation with solar thermal technology could be one of the most promising way to address the global freshwater scarcity, with its low cost and minimum environmental impacts. However, the low liquid water productivity, which is caused by the heat loss and inadequate heat utilization in solar-thermal conversion process, hinders its practical application. Here, a compact solar-thermal membrane distillation system with three structure features: highly localized solar-thermal heating, effec ...[more]

PMID: 31565334

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Project description:Membrane distillation (MD) has shown promise for concentrating a wide variety of brines, but the knowledge is limited on how different brines impact salt scaling, flux decline, and subsequent wetting. Furthermore, past studies have lacked critical details and analysis to enable a physical understanding, including the length of experiments, the inclusion of salt kinetics, impact of antiscalants, and variability between feed-water types. To address this gap, we examined the system performance, water recovery, scale formation, and saturation index of a lab-scale vacuum membrane distillation (VMD) in long-running test runs approaching 200 h. The tests provided a comparison of a variety of relevant feed solutions, including a synthetic seawater reverse osmosis brine with a salinity of 8.0 g/L, tap water, and NaCl, and included an antiscalant. Saturation modeling indicated that calcite and aragonite were the main foulants contributing to permeate flux reduction. The longer operation times than typical studies revealed several insights. First, scaling could reduce permeate flux dramatically, seen here as 49% for the synthetic brine, when reaching a high recovery ratio of 91%. Second, salt crystallization on the membrane surface could have a long-delayed but subsequently significant impact, as the permeate flux experienced a precipitous decline only after 72 h of continuous operation. Several scaling-resistant impacts were observed as well. Although use of an antiscalant did not reduce the decrease in flux, it extended membrane operational time before surface foulants caused membrane wetting. Additionally, numerous calcium, magnesium, and carbonate salts, as well as silica, reached very high saturation indices (>1). Despite this, scaling without wetting was often observed, and scaling was consistently reversible and easily washed. Under heavy scaling conditions, many areas lacked deposits, which enabled continued operation; existing MD performance models lack this effect by assuming uniform layers. This work implies that longer times are needed for MD fouling experiments, and provides further scaling-resistant evidence for MD.

Dataset Information

Highly Efficient Water Harvesting with Optimized Solar Thermal Membrane Distillation Device.

Publications

Highly Efficient Water Harvesting with Optimized Solar Thermal Membrane Distillation Device.

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