Imperial College London
Portrait Picture

Prof Claire S. Adjiman FREng

Faculty of Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering

Professor of Chemical Engineering
 
 
 
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Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 6638c.adjiman Website

 
 
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Location

 

608Roderic Hill BuildingSouth Kensington Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Gu:2016:10.1016/j.memsci.2016.12.058,
author = {Gu, B and Adjiman, CS and Xu, XY},
doi = {10.1016/j.memsci.2016.12.058},
journal = {Journal of Membrane Science},
pages = {78--91},
title = {The effect of feed spacer geometry on membrane performance and concentration polarisation based on 3D CFD simulations},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.memsci.2016.12.058},
volume = {527},
year = {2016}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - Feed spacers are used in spiral wound reverse osmosis (RO) membrane modules to keep the membrane sheets apart as well as to enhance mixing. They are beneficial to membrane performance but at the expense of additional pressure loss. In this study, four types of feed spacer configurations are investigated, with a total of 20 geometric variations based on commercially available spacers and selected filament angles. The impact of feed spacer design on membrane performance is investigated by means of three-dimensional (3D) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations, where the solution-diffusion model is employed for water and solute transport through RO membranes. Numerical simulation results show that, for the operating and geometric conditions examined, fully woven spacers outperform other spacer configurations in mitigating concentration polarisation (CP). When designed with a mesh angle of 60°, fully woven spacers also deliver the highest water flux, although the associated pressure drops are slightly higher than their nonwoven counterparts. Middle layer geometries with a mesh angle of 30° produce the lowest water flux. On the other hand, spacers with a mesh angle of 90° show the lowest pressure drop among all the filament arrangements examined. Furthermore, the computational model presented here can also be used to predict membrane performance for a given feed spacer type and geometry.
AU  - Gu,B
AU  - Adjiman,CS
AU  - Xu,XY
DO  - 10.1016/j.memsci.2016.12.058
EP  - 91
PY  - 2016///
SN  - 1873-3123
SP  - 78
TI  - The effect of feed spacer geometry on membrane performance and concentration polarisation based on 3D CFD simulations
T2  - Journal of Membrane Science
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.memsci.2016.12.058
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/43497
VL  - 527
ER  -
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