Gas-Liquid Hollow Fiber Membrane Contactors for Different Applications

Gas-liquid membrane contactors that were based on hollow fiber membranes are the example of highly effective hybrid separation processes in the field of membrane technology. Membranes provide a fixed and well-determined interface for gas/liquid mass transfer without dispensing one phase into another while their structure (hollow fiber) offers very large surface area per apparatus volume resulted in the compactness and modularity of separation equipment. In many cases, stated benefits are complemented with high separation selectivity typical for absorption technology. Since hollow fiber membrane contactors are agreed to be one of the most perspective methods for CO2 capture technologies, the major reviews are devoted to research activities within this field. This review is focused on the research works carried out so far on the applications of membrane contactors for other gas-liquid separation tasks, such as water deoxygenation/ozonation, air humidity control, ethylene/ethane separation, etc. A wide range of materials, membranes, and liquid solvents for membrane contactor processes are considered. Special attention is given to current studies on the capture of acid gases (H2S, SO2) from different mixtures. The examples of pilot-scale and semi-industrial implementation of membrane contactors are given.

Rigorous modelling and optimization of hybrid separation processes based on pervaporation

Hybrid separation processes are becoming more and more important in the practice if membrane technologies are also involved. In this work, a systematic investigation is completed for three sequence alternatives of distillation and pervaporation. These are the following: pervaporation followed with distillation (PV+D), distillation followed with pervaporation (D+PV), two distillation columns and a pervaporation unit between them (D+PV+D). The hybrid separation process alternatives are evaluated with rigorous modelling tools, but first, a rigorous simulation algorithm is determined for the pervaporation. The three hybrid separation processes are rigorously modelled with CHEMCAD, and optimized with the dynamic programming optimization method for the case of the separation of ethanol-water mixture. The objective function is the total annual cost (TAC). The energy consumption is also investigated. The selection of the ethanol-water mixture has two motivations: (i) it is quite often studied and well known, and (ii) to make biofuel (ethanol) production more economical, membrane technologies might also be applied. The results are compared with each other and with the classical separation completed with heteroazeotropic distillation. The optimized TAC shows that the distillation column followed with pervaporation is the most economical hybrid separation process alternative. Its TAC is about 66% of that of the classical separation.