MITIGATION OF TEMPERATURE POLARIZATION AND MINERAL SCALING IN MEMBRANE DISTILLATION: THE IMPACT OF INDUCTION HEATED ELEMENTS
type: CreativeWork
description: In the last decade, there is a growing interest in membrane distillation (MD) technology, a thermally driven membrane separation process, to treat high salinity water or contaminated wastewater. However, MD commercialization is still limited by technical challenges such as temperature polarization (TP), heat losses, scaling, and high energy consumption, as the feed solution requires continuous heating to provide an efficient driving force. The present work aims to develop and optimize a novel, efficient, and robust MD system utilizing an electromagnetic field, i.e., induction heating (IH) as a heat source for MD distillation, specifically aimed to overcome MD limitations. The proposed MD system includes a radio frequency IH system and a metallic component embedded to the hydrophobic membrane. This allows fast and contactless heating of the feed solution at the membrane surface without the need for preheating the bulk feed solution. As a result of the increase in solution’s temperature at the membrane-solution interface, TP reduces and thus, distillate flux increases. In addition, as IH transfers energy directly to electrically and thermally conducting materials with minimal heat loss to the surrounding environment, it leads to significant power savings. Two main concept approaches for the radio frequency heated MD (RF-MD) system were evaluated. First, the RF-MD system included a thermally conducting dual-layer membrane containing a magnetic hydrophilic layer based on iron oxide-carbon nanotubes coated on a hydrophobic membrane. Heating the solution was mainly done directly at the membrane-water interface. The impact of operational conditions on the distillate flux and salt rejection was evaluated while treating high salinity feeds (35-100 g/L NaCl). Following optimization, high distillate flux and 99% salt rejection were measured at a low inlet flow velocity (2.33 cm/min) and low vacuum (20 kPa) conditions. In addition, the specific heating energy of the system was …
abstract: In the last decade, there is a growing interest in membrane distillation (MD) technology, a thermally driven membrane separation process, to treat high salinity water or contaminated wastewater. However, MD commercialization is still limited by technical challenges such as temperature polarization (TP), heat losses, scaling, and high energy consumption, as the feed solution requires continuous heating to provide an efficient driving force. The present work aims to develop and optimize a novel, efficient, and robust MD system utilizing an electromagnetic field, i.e., induction heating (IH) as a heat source for MD distillation, specifically aimed to overcome MD limitations. The proposed MD system includes a radio frequency IH system and a metallic component embedded to the hydrophobic membrane. This allows fast and contactless heating of the feed solution at the membrane surface without the need for preheating the bulk feed solution. As a result of the increase in solution’s temperature at the membrane-solution interface, TP reduces and thus, distillate flux increases. In addition, as IH transfers energy directly to electrically and thermally conducting materials with minimal heat loss to the surrounding environment, it leads to significant power savings. Two main concept approaches for the radio frequency heated MD (RF-MD) system were evaluated. First, the RF-MD system included a thermally conducting dual-layer membrane containing a magnetic hydrophilic layer based on iron oxide-carbon nanotubes coated on a hydrophobic membrane. Heating the solution was mainly done directly at the membrane-water interface. The impact of operational conditions on the distillate flux and salt rejection was evaluated while treating high salinity feeds (35-100 g/L NaCl). Following optimization, high distillate flux and 99% salt rejection were measured at a low inlet flow velocity (2.33 cm/min) and low vacuum (20 kPa) conditions. In addition, the specific heating energy of the system was …
author: Anvari, Arezou
language: eng
keywords: Environmental engineering, Chemical engineering
license: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
date published: 2020
date modified: 2026-07-27T21:21:14Z
provider: Temple University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Temple University. Libraries

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12613/4766