Teoh, Hui Chieh (2018) Study on the Effects of Spacer Shape, Spacer Geometry and Reynolds Number in Spacer-filled Membrane Channel Using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). PhD thesis, UTAR.
Abstract
The occurrence of concentration polarisation and fouling phenomena are two major problems that can affect the performance of a membrane and should be minimised whenever possible. It was found in previous literatures that the spacers in a spiral-wound membrane (SWM) can help to reduce these two phenomena at the expense of higher energy consumption. In the present work, the flow hydrodynamics, concentration polarisation and fouling behaviours in a narrow spacer-filled membrane channel were investigated through two-dimensional and three-dimensional models using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approach. A total of twelve spacer shapes and four flow attack angles were successfully investigated in this work and the results showed that different spacer shapes had different performance in terms of mass transfer, pressure drop, concentration polarisation and fouling control. Arc 0.50 shape spacer, with a flow attack angle of 45, appeared to be the best design among all the spacers investigated, where it showed potential in improving the performance of membrane processes with a good balance between energy consumption and better control on concentration polarisation and fouling. Arc 0.50 shape had a mass transfer enhancement of 11% and pressure drop reduction of 4% compared to the conventional circle shape spacer. The investigations on the effect of Reynolds number (Re) showed that the increase in pressure drop gradient was faster than the decrease in the average concentration polarisation as Re increases. This implies the need of a balance between the increases in feed velocity and the increases in pressure drop across a membrane module.
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