Experimental investigation of effects of ceramic membrane channels on flux and optimization with CFD

There are three effects in the ceramic membrane filtration process, wall thickness effect, interfering effect, sheltering effect, and these effects are validated by experiments. When mean pore size of membrane is less than 200 nm, flow by volume is increased by enhancing loading density. When mean pore size of membrane is more than 500 nm, the contribution of middle channel to the total pure water flux (PWF) of ceramic membranes can be neglected, and it is no use to enhance loading density. It is assumed that the diameter of membrane module was unchanged, and defined channel diameter a_c, thickness of the wall a_w, and set α as the ratio of a_c and a_w. The relationship between flux, flow, mean pore size and α was acquired by numerical simulation with CFD software.