An innovative application of membrane contactors: the vacuum membrane dryer

An innovative application of membrane contactors is presented in this work. The study focused on the use of Vacuum Membrane Distillation (VMD) for the dehydration of an aqueous solution containing solid polystryrene microparticles (7 micron). The main aim was to obtain a concentrate with a solid content higher than 95 wt %, together with a permeate particle-free. The membrane modules employed (called Vacuum Membrane Dryers-VMDr) were equipped with both flat and capillary commercial membranes. In particular, five different membrane module designs were realized, tested and compared, to investigate the potential of this innovative application of VMD. For all of them, it was possible to produce a permeate that did not contain any solid microparticle, whereas only for two configurations it was possible to obtain a final solid content in the feed up to 98 wt% .