Hydrodynamic and Performance Evaluation of a Porous Ceramic Membrane Module Used on the Water-Oil Separation Process: An Investigation by CFD

• Published in: Membranes (Basel) Vol. 11; no. 2; p. 121
• Main Authors: Oliveira Neto, Guilherme L, Oliveira, Nívea G N, Delgado, João M P Q, Nascimento, Lucas P C, Magalhães, Hortência L F, Oliveira, Paloma L de, Gomez, Ricardo S, Farias Neto, Severino R, Lima, Antonio G B
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 08.02.2021; MDPI
• Subjects: Ansys Fluent; Average flow; CFD; Computational fluid dynamics; Contaminants; Efficiency; Effluents; Filtration; Flow rates; Fluid dynamics; Fluid flow; Investigations; Mass flow rate; Membrane permeability; Membrane reactors; Membrane separation; Membranes; Modules; Oil and gas industry; Oily water; Outlets; Particle size; Performance evaluation; Permeability; Pore size; Porosity; Pressure reduction; produced water; Separation; Separators; Turbulence models; Wastewater; Water purification; CFD; membranes; produced water; Ansys Fluent; separation
• ISSN: 2077-0375; 2077-0375
• DOI: 10.3390/membranes11020121

Wastewater from the oil industry can be considered a dangerous contaminant for the environment and needs to be treated before disposal or re-use. Currently, membrane separation is one of the most used technologies for the treatment of produced water. Therefore, the present work aims to study the process of separating oily water in a module equipped with a ceramic membrane, based on the Eulerian-Eulerian approach and the Shear-Stress Transport (SST k-ω) turbulence model, using the Ansys Fluent 15.0. The hydrodynamic behavior of the water/oil mixture in the filtration module was evaluated under different conditions of the mass flow rate of the fluid mixture and oil concentration at the entrance, the diameter of the oil particles, and membrane permeability and porosity. It was found that an increase in the feed mass flow rate from 0.5 to 1.5 kg/s significantly influenced transmembrane pressure, that varied from 33.00 to 221.32 kPa. Besides, it was observed that the particle diameter and porosity of the membranes did not influence the performance of the filtration module; it was also verified that increasing the permeability of the membranes, from 3 × 10 to 3 × 10 m , caused transmembrane pressure reduction of 22.77%. The greater the average oil concentration at the permeate (from 0.021 to 0.037 kg/m ) and concentrate (from 1.00 to 1.154 kg/m ) outlets, the higher the average flow rate of oil at the permeate outlets. These results showed that the filter separator has good potential for water/oil separation.