Heat and mass transfer in hollow-fiber modules for direct contact membrane distillation: Integral transforms solution and parametric analysis

This work reports a heat and mass transfer analysis of direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD), aiming at predicting its performance in water desalination with hollow-fiber membrane modules. A single-fiber model is proposed to simulate the simultaneous heat and mass transfer in DCMD for a hollow-fibers bundle, and the efficiency of the desalination process is assessed. The problem for a single membrane is handled through the hybrid numerical-analytical approach known as the Generalized Integral Transform Technique (GITT). A comparison of the numerical results obtained with the proposed model and both theoretical and experimental results from the literature is carried out. A prediction of the performance of a hollow-fiber DCMD module is then presented and paths for further improvement are discussed.