The number of published papers about membrane distillation (MD) has been growing exponentially and many evaluation and performance criteria are used to measure it; but, there is no established tradition or evaluation standard for them. This makes the evaluations difficult to compare, or even incomplete. This paper presents therefore a comprehensive critical review and clarification of the major...

Membrane distillation (MD) has emerged as an important technology for applications in industries such as seawater desalination and wastewater treatment due to its low energy requirement and theoretically low fouling propensity. However, the main obstacle to obtain high separating efciency in MD lies on the availability of porous hydrophobic membrane that can withstand p...

Membrane distillation (MD) was applied for the concentration of a range of dairy streams, such as whole milk, skim milk and whey. MD of a pure lactose solution was also investigated. Direct contact MD (DCMD) mode experiments were carried out in continuous concentration mode, keeping the warm feed/retentate and cold permeate stream temperatures at 54 °C and 5 °C respectively. Performance in term...

In this study, we examined the feasibility of membrane distillation (MD) for removing trace organic compounds (TrOCs) during water and wastewater treatment. A set of 29 compounds was selected to represent major TrOC groups, including pharmaceuticals, steroid hormones, phytoestrogens, UV-filters, industrial chemicals, and pesticides that occur ubiquitously in municipal wastewater. Results report...

Submerged membrane distillation (S-MD) has been proposed as an alternative to conventional cross-flow MD systems desalinate hypersaline water. In S-MD systems, the hydrophobic is submerged in feed water tank that directly heated by electric heating element, eliminating need for pumping. this study, a solar-heated vacuum (S-VMD) system uses evacuated tube collector container proposed. Indoor tes...

In this study, process enhancements achieved by the use of 3D printed feed spacers based on triply periodic minimal surfaces (TPMS) were comparatively assessed using two most common membrane distillation (MD) configurations: air gap (AGMD) and direct contact (DCMD). The MD performance was impact spacer design (TPMS vs. commercial spacer) flux channel pressure drop, their consequent levelized co...

Separate treatment of high-nutrient sidestream is an efficient and cost effective way to decrease the loading on the main plant, resulting in lower effluent nutrient concentration. This study investigated the use of a combined forward osmosis-membrane distillation (FO-MD) system for the removal of nitrogen present in high concentration in sidestream from anaerobic digestion process. The combine...

Seawater desalination is a worldwide concern for the sustainable production of drinking water. In this regard, membrane distillation (MD) has shown potential effective brine treatment. However, lack appropriate MD membranes limits its industrial expansion since they experience fouling and wetting issues. Therefore, hydrophobic are promising candidates to successfully deal with such phenomena th...

Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) nanofiber membranes with novel crosshatched structures are developed and applied to both water desalination by direct contact membrane distillation (MD) CO2 separation gas absorption. Crosshatched produced from a PTFE-poly(ethylene oxide)(PEO) emulsion depositing alternating layers of aligned fibers oriented in perpendicular directions. This is followed sintering ...

Membrane distillation has the potential to concentrate solutions to their saturation level, thus offering the possibility to recover valuable salts from the solutions. The process performance and stability, however, is strongly dependent upon the features of membranes applied. In addition, several other parameters, membrane thickness and thermal conductivity significantly affect the process per...