Mass transfer analysis and performance evaluation of an industrial hollow-fiber membrane module in a N2 enrichment process

In this paper, O2/N2 separation potency using industrial polyimide hollow-fiber membrane module wascharacterized through process simulation and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods. The purpose of this studywas surveying the operational features of this separation process resulted from Aspen Hysys software and ComsolMultiphysics. In CFD modeling, the equations for feed sections (tubes), dense and porous membrane layers, and sweepgas layer (shell) with suitable boundary conditions were solved by Comsol Multiphysics software version 5.4. In orderto validate the modeling, the outcomes of the Comsol software included the N2 and O2 mole fraction in the permeateand retentate flow, the N2 and O2 enrichment percentages, and the wast rates of N2 and O2 were compared with theresults of the Aspen Hysys oftware outcome which good results were achieved.

Keywords:

CFD , Hollow-Fiber , Membrane , Air Separation , N2 Enrichment