Membrane Condenser as a New Technology for Water Recovery from Humidified "Waste" Gaseous Streams

The potentialities of a membrane condenser for the selective recovery of evaporated wastewater from industrial gases have been investigated in the present paper. Membrane modules have been prepared and their performance has been evaluated in an artificial flue gas stream. A simulation study of the process has been carried out for predicting the membrane based process performance. The achieved results indicate that a 20% water recovery (the amount to make the plant selfsufficient) can be achieved with temperature reductions less than 5 °C if flue gas is in common conditions (i.e., 50 °C < T < 90 °C and 90% < RH < 100%). To verify the results achieved by the simulation analysis a membrane module with microporous hydrophobic PVDF hollow fibers has been built, and its performance has been evaluated by feeding an artificial flue gas stream. The experimental results showed good agreement with the simulation ones, obtaining deviations less than 2.24%.