(186g) Water Desalination By Vacuum Membrane Distillation

Water Desalination by Vacuum Membrane Distillation

S. P. Chaurasia, Sushant Upadhyaya, Kailash Singh  

Department of Chemical Engineering, Malaviya National Institute of Technology Jaipur

J.L.N Marg, Jaipur-302017 (India)

Corresponding author, Email: chch1962@gmail.com

                        Co-authors Email: Sushant.cipet@gmail.com, ksingh.mnit@gmail.com.

Abstract

In this work, the desalination experiment was performed through VMD set up and the idea was focused on the removal of multi-ions basically chloride, fluoride and sodium ions, which were present in ground water of rural and urban areas by simulating the secondary solution containing the multi-ions above a permissible limit. The feed solution containing 3000 ppm of sodium chloride and 1000 ppm of sodium fluoride was pumped to feed side of flat sheet micro-porous hydrophobic Poly-tetra-fluoro-ethylene (PTFE) membrane. The performance of PTFE membrane for removal of multi-ions under VMD has been studied. Effect of various parameter like feed flow rate, feed bulk temperature, vacuum pressure and feed salt concentration on permeate flux and rejection have been investigated. The mathematical model [Upadhyaya et al., 2010] was simulated for various parameters. The experimental results are in good agreement with that predicted by model. The maximum purity of 99.8% approximately with permeate flux of 26.6 kg/m²hr was obtained at feed flow rate of 120 liter/hr, vacuum pressure of 5.5 kPa and feed temperature of 333 K. This indicates the strength of VMD to produce safe drinking water from ground water in rural and urban areas.

Keywords: vacuum membrane distillation (VMD), drinking water, PTFE, fluoride removal.