Abstract :
Desalination has been progressively more adopted over the last decades as an opportunity, and
sometimes as a necessity to beat water shortages in many areas around the world. Today, quite a lot of
thermal and physical separation technologies are well established in large scale production for domestic and
industrial purposes. Membrane distillation is a novel thermally-driven process that can be adapted efficiently
for water desalination, due to its prospective lower energy consumption and simplicity.Membrane distillation
is a membrane separation process which may overcome some limitations of the other membrane technologies
. The membrane distillation process constitutes one of the potential for a new method for water desalination
in particular, high solute concentrations can be reached, overcoming concentration polarization
phenomenon and ultrapure water can be formed as a permeate. In this process a micro-porous hydrophobic
membranes is used , liquid water impermeable to the transport ,only water vapour can be transported through
them, having a vapour pressure difference as driving force at the two solutions membrane interface. A variety
of polymeric hydrophobic membranes have been prepared with an suitable micro-porosity . The effect of the
feed temperature, feed flow rate , cooling water temperature ,cooling water flow rate etc .have been studied
theoretically and tested experimentally and also energy consumption. Membrane distillation has shown
motivating potential in water desalination,. In addition, the overall performance of the processes can
improved .if membrane distillation is integrated with other process to achieve higher concentration
standards .
Keyword :
Membrane distillation, desalination, hydrophobic membrane, brackish water