ie5b03087_si_001.pdf (2.06 MB)
Multiscale Simulation Method for Flow and Mass-Transfer Characteristics in a Reverse Osmosis Membrane Module
journal contribution
posted on 2015-11-18, 00:00 authored by Toru Ishigami, Hideto MatsuyamaThis paper presents a numerical simulation
method for calculating
flow and mass-transfer characteristics in an entire membrane sheet
module comprised of feed and permeate channels. The channels, including
the spacers, were coarse-grained as the porous media for simulation
of the entire membrane sheet. This is because the previous unit cell
concept, which directly calculates the flow and solute concentration
fields around the spacers, cannot be extended to the meter-sized computational
domain owing to computational load limitations. We first carried out
the unit cell simulation of the spacer-filled channel to obtain the
flow and mass-transfer characteristics. The obtained flow and mass-transfer
characteristics were then used for modeling porous media. The flow
and solute mass fraction fields were then calculated for a membrane
sheet, and the effect of the spacer arrangement on the membrane sheet
performance was investigated. From the relationship between the pressure
drop and water permeation rate, significantly different correlations
were found for two parameters: the distance between the spacers and
the angle between the spacers.