Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) opportunities applied to the membrane distillation process: State-of-the-art and perspectives

•MD process has been extensively used in desalination and water/wastewater treatment.•Transport phenomena is a crucial issue that affects MD process performance.•CFD could provide a lot of interesting information for the development of new MDs.•This paper reviews CFD simulations applied to MD process, comprehensively.•This paper also prospected the different ways in which the CFD can be used for MD.

The robustness and efficiency of the numerical methods for obtaining solutions to MD membranes and module problems (e.g. temperature and concentration polarizations and, distillate flux enhancement) have given rise to the adoption of Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) as a widely used analysis tool to study transport phenomena for MD processes. This paper reviews recent researches utilizing CFD simulations to study the momentum, heat and mass transfer in conventional and newly designed MD modules, such as those including spacer-filled feed channels. Many of these works have focused on optimizing hydrodynamics and investigating the effect of various spacers' geometry, while fewer of them have attempted to gain a better understanding of the mechanisms giving rise to mass transfer enhancement inside the membrane pores. CFD and its couple with other modeling/simulation softwares could provide a lot of interesting information for the development of new MD membranes and modules. This paper also reviewed the different ways in which the CFD techniques are used to improve MD performance. Possible concepts and perspectives for applying CFD to new MD processes are discussed, comprehensively.

Graphical abstractA general scheme of current MD researches' approach and CFD opportunity to MD process.Figure optionsDownload full-size imageDownload as PowerPoint slide