CFD modeling and experimental study of pulse flow in a hollow fiber membrane for water filtration.

In this paper, two kinds of pulse feed including sinusoidal pulse flow (SPF) and intermittent pulse flow (IPF) were applied at the entrance of the ultrafiltration (UF) module with hollow fiber membrane, which were more effective for flux enhancement. As compared to compared to continuous flow at the same average velocity, the improvement of permeation flux could reach up to 80% for SPF and 44% for IPF, respectively. The mechanism of pulse feeding on flux enhancement was explored and a comprehensive analysis of the shear stress distribution along the membrane surface has been performed by a three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (3D CFD) model. Additionally, comparison of pressure drop between pulse feed and steady flow was done to evaluate energy consumption. Results indicated that sinusoidal pulse flow (SPF) led to higher shear force and higher efficiency in UF process than IPF, which is consistent with experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]