Membrane evaporators

Susumu Nii, R. Selwyn Jebson, E. L. Cussler

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

23 Scopus citations

Abstract

We have built and tested a flat-sheet membrane evaporator for removing water from dilute feed streams like milk and orange juice. The energy for the water's evaporation comes from steam channels next to the feed channels, so that the operation differs sharply from other forms of 'membrane distillation'. The membrane evaporator retains flavors effectively. Because it has an overall vapor phase mass transfer coefficient of about 1cm/s, it is only 68% efficient: only about 0.68kg water is evaporated per kg steam condensed. This efficiency should be over 95% for a membrane which is 10 times more permeable.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)149-159
Number of pages11
JournalJournal of Membrane Science
Volume201
Issue number1-2
DOIs
StatePublished - May 31 2002

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The authors benefited from discussions with Professor Richard McClurg. The membranes used in this work were generously supplied by Klaus Ohlrogge and K. Ebert of GKSS. The work was partially supported by the US Air Force (AFOSR F49620-01-1-0333) and by the Petroleum Research Fund of the American Chemical Society (Grant 36528-AC9).

Keywords

  • Liquid permeability and separations
  • Membrane distillation
  • Pervaporation

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