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Water is the most desirable and sparse resource in Gulf cooperation council (GCC) region. Utilization of point-of-use (POU) water treatment devices has been gaining huge market recently due to increase in knowledge of urban population on health related issues over contaminants in decentralized water distribution networks. However, there is no foolproof way of knowing whether the treated water is free of contaminants harmful for drinking and hence reliance on certified bottled water has increased worldwide. The bottling process right from treatment to delivery is highly unsustainable due to huge energy demand along the supply chain. As a step towards sustainability, we investigated various ways of coupling of membrane distillation (MD) process with solar domestic heaters for co-production of domestic heat and pure water. Performance dynamics of various integration techniques have been evaluated and appropriate configuration has been identified for real scale application. A solar combi MD (SCMD) system is experimentally tested for single household application for production 20 L/day of pure water and 250 L/day of hot water simultaneously without any auxiliary heating device. The efficiency of co-production system is compared with individual operation of solar heaters and solar membrane distillation., QC 20170626

Membrane distillation is a novel process that could be adapted effectively for many water purification applications. In recent years, several bench, pilot and commercial scale membrane distillation systems with production capacities ranging from 20 L/d to 50 m(3)/d were developed and tested. In this work, a single cassette air-gap membrane distillation (AGMD) module was characterized to identify the effect of process parameters on distillate flux and thermal efficiency. Favorable conditions to obtain distillate flow rate of 1.5-3 kg/h were determined on a bench scale experimental setup. Factorial design of experiments was conducted and response surface methodology (RSM) was applied to develop an empirical regression model relating operating parameters with AGMD system performance indicators. Operating parameters including hot feed inlet temperature (T-Hin), cold feed inlet temperature (T-Cin), feed flow rate (V-f) and feed conductivity (C-f) were considered. Distillate flux (J(d)) and specific performance ratio (SPR) were selected as the performance indicators for the modeling. The developed regression model using RSM was tested by analysis of variance. Regression analysis showed agreement with the experimental data fitted with second-order polynomial model having determination coefficient (R-2) values of 0.996 and 0.941 for J(d) and SPR, respectively. Numerical optimization has been carried out to identify optimal set of operating conditions for achieving desired operation. Also, dynamic simulation of the membrane distillation module integrated solar thermal system has been reported along with validation of the system model by comparing with the experimental data obtained from a pilot scale setup located in UAE., QC 20171122