Seawater Desalination Based on a Bubbling and Vacuum-Enhanced Direct Contact Membrane Distillation

A Bubbling and Vacuum-enhanced direct contact membrane distillation (BVDCMD) is proposed to improve the water production rate of the direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD-)based seawater desalination process. Its heat and mass transfer mechanism are theoretically analyzed, and a CFD model is established, which is verified by the published data. Four types of the noncondensable gas, “O2,” “air,” “N2,” and “H2,” are adopted as the bubbling gas, and their process enhancements under different pressure of permeate side, temperature, and NaCl concentration of feed side and flow velocities are investigated. The results show that the permeate flux increased remarkably with the decrease in the viscosity of the bubbling gas, and hence, “H2” is the best option for the bubbling gas, with the permeate flux being enhanced by 144.11% and the effective heat consumption being increased by 20.81% on average. The effective water production rate of BVDCMD is predicted to be 42.38% more than that of DCMD, proving its feasibility in the seawater desalination.

Numerical Investigation of Influence of Nanoparticles Presence on Water Vapor Condensation Process inside a Vertical Channel

This paper is aimed at investigating the nanofluid film condensation by mixed convection in the presence of water vapor, Cu nanoparticles, and air treated as a noncondensable gas (NCG) on the inner walls of a vertical channel. In this simulation, the flow is laminar, stationary, two dimensional, and axisymmetric. The coupled governing equations for the liquid film with the nanoparticles and the mixture air-humid-nanoparticles are solved together using the finite volume method. Since the application of humid air condensation is one of the most applicable methods of phase change processes that is observed in different industrial fields such as heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) or cooling systems, for this purpose, the influence of injecting a uniform volume fraction of nanoparticles on improving heat and mass transfer is determined as a function of the variation in relative humidity, velocity, temperature, pressure, and volume fraction of Cu nanoparticles at the channel inlet. The numerical results indicate that under the best conditions in the range of variation studied RH in = 100 % , Re in = 2000 , T in = 50 ° C , P in = 0.5 atm , and φ in = 0.1 % , the use of nanoparticles has a greater impact, and the maximum improvement in the condensation film thickness, the local Nusselt number, and the accumulated condensation rate has an effective ratio strictly greater than one compared with the case of pure humid air.

The Investigation on Heat Transfer Characteristics of Steam Condensation in Presence of Noncondensable Gas under Natural Convection

The NHR-200 reactor in China adopts the noncondensable gas self-stabilizing control and the noncondensable gas used for pressure stabilization control can weaken steam condensation heat transfer in the integrated steam-gas pressurizer. A condensation experimental system was established and the heat transfer characteristics of steam-nitrogen and steam-argon condensation under natural convection had been investigated. The pressure ranged from 0.516 to 5.10 MPa. The distributions of nitrogen and argon in the steam/gas mixture were obtained in the experiments, and the results showed that nitrogen and argon were evenly distributed in the steam under different pressure, respectively. The effects of heat transfer temperature difference had also been investigated and it is found that the total heat transfer coefficient difference had little influence on the total condensation heat transfer coefficient. However, the steam condensation heat transfer coefficient decreased with the increase of the degree of supercooling of the wall. The condensation heat transfer coefficient was reduced by approximately 0.11 kW/(m2·K) as the degree of supercooling of the wall changed from 14°C to 36°C. The condensation heat transfer coefficient also decreased with the mass/molar fraction of noncondensable gas increasing and a certain difference between the effect of the mass fraction of noncondensable gas and the effect of the molar fraction of noncondensable gas was discussed in this paper.