Electrical thermal networks for direct contact membrane distillation modeling

Membrane distillation (MD) is a thermally driven process where only water vapor is passed through a hydrophobic membrane. Several models have been proposed to study this process, yet most of them assume steady-state conditions. This work presents a new approach to model Direct Contact Membrane Distillation (DCMD) dynamics based on the analogy between electrical and thermal systems. A lumped-capacitance dynamical model accounting for mass, energy, and momentum balance was derived and simulated in Simulink. First, the model was validated by considering three measures: the temperature distribution along the flow direction, the effect of feed linear velocity on the output temperatures, and total mass flux. The simulation results were compared with experimental data reported in the literature and showed very close match to the experimental measurements.