Abstract
In recent years, many countries have made a lot of efforts to develop sea water desalination technology for the growing demand of water. At the same time, the usage of low grade waste heat and renewable energy is paid more attention because of the global warming issues and the growing prices of fossil fuels. Therefore, the membrane distillation, which is a desalination technology used with low grade waste heat or renewable energy, is more attractive now. This thesis investigates the heat and mass transport phenomena of direct membrane distillation (DCMD), which is one of varied membrane distillation methods. In this thesis, we develop the computer programs of Fortran to simulate the operation of DCMD within single hydrophobic membranes, or within composite membranes, and then compare the simulation results with other researchers’ work. The deviations of numerical results from experimental data for single hydrophobic membranes are below 18.93% (maximum error), and 7.16% in average. For stacked membranes, the deviations are 22.79% in maximum, and 10.25% in average.