JP Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer

© 2021 Pushpa Publishing House, Prayagraj, India

http://www.pphmj.com
http://dx.doi.org/10.17654/HM023010139
Volume 23, Number 1, 2021, Pages 139-151 ISSN: 0973-5763

CFD SIMULATION IN HOLLOW FIBER

AND TUBULAR MEMBRANES

L. Salama1,*, H. Elaouani2, C. Motik3, A. Guennoun1, Z. Laaziz1,

R. Moultif1 and A. Dezairi1
1
Faculty of Sciences
Ben M’sick Laboratory of Physics and Condensed Matter
Hassan II University of Casablanca
B.P. 7955, Av. D. EL Harty, 20663 Casablanca, Morocco
e-mail: salama.latifa0@gmail.com
2
Department of Chemistry
Faculty of Science
Laboratory of Coordination and Analytical Chemistry (LCCA)
Chouaib Doukkali University El Jadida
Morocco
3
Faculty of Sciences
Ain Chock Microbio Technology and Environment
Hassan II University of Casablanca
Morocco

Abstract

Membrane filtration has become a primary technology for ensuring the

safety and efficiency of treatment of wastewater. This work presents a
simulation of wastewater using hollow fiber and tubular membranes.
Received: March 20, 2021; Accepted: April 29, 2021
Keywords and phrases: membranes, simulation, CFD, separation, hollow fiber membrane,
tubular membrane.

Corresponding author
140 L. Salama et al.
Mass transfer and hydrodynamics of the system were investigated
by solving conservation equations. The conservation equations solved
are the Navier-Stokes and continuity equations which were solved
numerically using the computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Finite
element analysis was applied for numerical solution of the system
equations. The influence of effective parameters on the mass
transfer and hydrodynamics of the process removal was investigated.
The distribution profiles of concentration, concentration polarization,
velocity, and pressure were obtained and compared between the
hollow fiber and tubular membranes for the solute. The results of the
simulation confirmed that feed and solvent velocities are the most
important parameters in the separation. It is also indicated that the
hollow fiber membrane reactors showed good results in the removal
process from aqueous solutions.

1. Introduction

Wastewater and industrial water from plants contain organic and

inorganic components which are considered as great danger to the
environment and the life of human. These inorganic components including
acids, bases and salts are used in functional domains such as pharmaceutical,
and chemical ones. These components have a wide range of applications
including pharmaceuticals, electrolyte in lead-acid batteries, detergents,
petrochemicals, textiles and various cleaning agents. In addition, it is a
central substance in the chemical industry. However, these substances are
known to be dangerous water contaminants, and their removal from water
sources is a critical challenge. Because of that, many governments made
attempts to provide healthy water for community [1]. There exist different
conventional processes for removal of toxic components from wastewater
such as air stripping, selective ion exchange, break-point chlorination,
denitrification, and biological treatment. These processes have some
disadvantages. The major disadvantage of separation processes for
contaminants extraction is that these processes consume high energy. Other
disadvantages of these processes are: high operational costs, difficult design
and scale up, flooding and foaming. Designing and developing effective
 CFD Simulation in Hollow Fiber and Tubular Membranes 141
separation processes for removing toxic components from wastewater
have been an important subject of research. The membrane science and
technologies are found to play increasingly crucial roles in many
applications such as chemical analysis, desalination, food production, gas
separation, wastewater treatment, resource harvesting, and medical diagnosis
and treatment. Generally, membranes consume low energy and provide
high efficiency; they can be classified according to their structures as dense
membranes and porous membranes [2]. This study presents separation
process of toxic components using the porous membranes.

Porous membranes have sparked widespread attention due to their

wide range of uses in the fields of various applications. However, they still
suffer from compromise that arises due to achieving a balance between the
selectivity and permeability, fouling issues, and lack of adaptability to meet
versatile and aggressive environments.

In general, the porous membrane is a semi permeable barrier between

two phases: the feed and solvent. If one component of a mixture moves
through the porous membrane faster than another mixture component, a
separation can be accomplished. Different structures of porous membrane
substrates have been used, such as: flat sheet, hollow-fiber, spiral-wound,
and tubular modules. Among them, the hollow-fiber and the tubular modules
are the most commonly used due to their high separation efficiency
compared to other membrane configurations [3].

In this work, we study the circulation and the description of the fluid
flow through the hollow fiber and tubular modules using the mass transfer
model .This latter could be described by two approaches. The first one is
based on resistance-in-series model, in which the resistances in the aqueous
phase boundary layer, membrane and extractant phases are considered in
series. The second approach is found to describe the fluid flow by solving
the Navier Stokes equations. In this approach, the Navier Stokes equations
including continuity, energy and momentum equations are derived and
solved simultaneously using numerical method based on computational fluid
142 L. Salama et al.
dynamics (CFD) techniques [4-11, 13-16]. The two-dimensional flow field
and convective diffusion equations for particle transport in laminar flow over
a permeable surface in a tubular and hollow fiber membranes are solved.
The effect of various physical parameters on the growth of concentration
polarization layer along the membrane surface is studied.

2. Theoretical Formalism

2.1. Mass transfer model

The mass transfer model is used to treat the phenomena of concentration

polarization in two membranes: tubular and hollow fiber. However, these
two membranes are employed to bring two phases (feed and solvent) in
contact for the purpose of separation as shown in Figure 1.

(a)
 CFD Simulation in Hollow Fiber and Tubular Membranes 143

(b)

Figure 1. Simulated geometry for hollow fiber (a) and tubular (b)
membranes.

In this model, the process of filtration is represented by two-dimensional

convective-diffusion equations, coupled with the resistance-in-series model
for permeation transport. To model the system process of separation in
tubular membrane  r, z  with radius R and length L and the hollow fiber
membrane which is composed by three compartment: lumen side of radius
R1, the membrane of R2 , and shell side of R3 in the case of laminar flow.
We note that the water is assumed to be the solvent and sulfuric acid to be
the solute in this study. To model the system process of separation, we have
made the following assumptions:

 The system is made at steady state and isothermal conditions.

 No heat transfer is assumed.

 Constant diffusion coefficient for the solvent.

 No slip condition at the membrane surface.

 The velocity shows a fully parabolic profile inside the membrane.

144 L. Salama et al.
For hollow fiber membrane, the mass transfer equations for all three
sections can be expressed as follows [16]:

  2C SA  lumen 1 C SA  lumen  2C SA  lumen 

DSA  lumen    
r 2 r r Z 2
 

C SA  lumen
 Vlumen , (1)
Z

  2CSA  membrane 1 CSA  membrane  2C SA  membrane 

DSA  membrane    
r 2 r r Z 2
 

 0, (2)

  2CSA  shell 1 CSA  shell  2C SA  shell 

DSA  shell    
r 2 r r Z 2
 

C SA  shell
 Vlumen , (3)
Z

where: D, C SA and V are, respectively, diffusivity coefficient, concentration

of salt and velocity.
The boundary conditions are:

z  0, C SA  C0 , (4)

r  r1, CSA  tube  CSA  membrane , (5)

CSA  membrane
r  0,  0 (symmetry). (6)
r

The boundary conditions for the membrane are given as:

r  r2 , C SA  membrane  C SA  shell , (7)

r  r1, C SA  membrane  m  CSA  tube . (8)

The boundary conditions for the shell side are given as:

Z  L, CSA  shell  0, (9)

 CFD Simulation in Hollow Fiber and Tubular Membranes 145
C SA  shell
r  r3 ,  0, (10)
r

r  r2 , C SA  shell  C SA  membrane . (11)

2.2. Momentum transfer model

In general, the velocity distribution is derived from the momentum
equation, i.e., Navier-Stokes equations. Consequently, the momentum and
continuity equations should be coupled and solved simultaneously for the
purpose of obtaining the concentration distribution of solute. On the other
hand, it is interesting to note the Navier-Stokes equations characterize flow
in viscous fluids through momentum balances for each of the components of
the momentum vector in all spatial dimensions. We need to note also that
according to this equation, the density and viscosity of the modeled fluid are
supposed to be constant, attributing a continuity condition. The velocity in
the inlet side is determined as:

 2
r 
Vz  tube  2u 1     , (12)
r
  1 

V
    V  V T   V   V  P  F , (13)
t

  V  0,

where F is the body force, and P is the pressure of the fluid.

Table 1. Boundary conditions of momentum

Position Tube Membrane Shell
Z  0 (inlet) V  V0 - P  Patm

Z  L (outlet) - - V  V0  shell

r  R1 - - -

r  R2 - - V 0

r  R3 - - -
146 L. Salama et al.
2.3. Simulation of the mass transfer model
The model equations of Navier-Stokes including continuity and
momentum equations related to the three sections of the hollow fiber (shell,
membrane and tube side) and the tubular membranes with the boundary
conditions were solved numerically on the basis of COMSOL software in
which the parameters used in simulation are listed in the table. COMSOL
uses finite element method (FEM) for numerical solutions of model
equations. This leads to the mass conservation in the domain; which means
that the numerical loss in the computational domain does not matter. In the
same context previous studies reported to the applicability and the validity
of the FEM method for the kind of domain encountered in the present work.
The finite element method was combined with adaptive meshing and error
control using numerical solver of UMFPACK version 4.2.

Table 2. Model parameters used for numerical simulation

Parameter Value Unit
Fiber inner radius r1  110 m
Fiber outer radius r2  150 m
Porosity (HFMC) () 1 -
Porosity (tubular) () 0.15 -

Diffusion coefficient (D) 109 m2 s

Temperature (T) 293 K

3. Results and Discussions

The main objective of the current study is to compare the separation

process of salts from wastewater in two different models of membranes:
hollow fiber membrane and tubular.

We aim to present the parameters that affect the process of this operation
using computer fluid dynamics CFD techniques.
 CFD Simulation in Hollow Fiber and Tubular Membranes 147
3.1. Concentration distribution of salt
Figures 2(a) and 2(b) present, respectively, the concentration distribution
of salt in the tubular and hollow fiber membranes for 10, 20 and 30 minutes.
It is clearly observed that the concentration of salt is exponentially decreased
as the function of arc length, this is due to the fact that at the beginning of
the operation, the driving force of salt transfer between inlet and outlet sides
of the membranes is high This is because of the relatively high concentration
gradient across the membrane. In fact, as salt is transferred to the outlet
side, its concentration decreases which leads to a lower driving force.
Furthermore, the concentration decrease in the region near the inlet of
hollow fiber membrane along the length of fiber is more than in that of
tubular membrane. This observation could be attributed to the fact to the
higher permeability and efficiency of the hollow fiber membrane.

Figure 2. (a) The concentration distribution of salt in the tubular, and (b)
hollow fiber membranes.

Figure 3. (a) Concentration polarization in the tubular, and (b) hollow fiber
membranes.
148 L. Salama et al.
The concentration polarization is one of the most important parameters
that limits the separation process. Figure 3 illustrates the concentration
polarization as the function of time during 30 minutes in the two membranes.
In the tubular membrane (a), the concentration polarization increases at the
inlet (droplet), and decreases in the middle and outlet sides of the membrane.
The same behavior is observed for tubular membrane for the hollow fiber
membrane with the exception that the rate of increase in this latter is
much smaller during 30 min in the shell side. This could be attributed to
the advantages of the hollow fiber membrane including the smaller pore
diameter, the higher capacity of filtration, higher efficiency and good ability
to transport some species more readily than the others.

Figure 4. Profile of velocity distribution in the hollow fiber membrane.

3.2. Velocity distribution

The profile of velocity distribution or the most important parameter in
the removal processes of the hollow fiber membrane is shown in Figure 4.
It is interesting to note that the velocity profile was simulated by solving the
Navier-Stokes equations in laminar flow conditions. It can be seen that the
velocity profile is almost parabolic. Moreover, the maximum velocity occurs
at the middle of the membrane and the amount of velocity on two walls of
the shell is approximately zero V  0.001 m s for Z  L, V  0 m s for
Z  L 2 and Z  0 due to no-slip condition. This maximum is found to
 CFD Simulation in Hollow Fiber and Tubular Membranes 149
increase with increase in the membrane length, which could be attributed to
the continuous fluid permeation.

3.3. Pressure distribution

The pressure is of great importance in the performance of HFMCs for
liquid-liquid extraction. The pressure distribution of extractive is determined
in the shell side of HFMC based on parameters reported in Table 2.

Figure 5. Pressure distribution in the hollow fiber membrane.

The pressure distribution in the shell side of the membrane contactor is

presented in Figure 5. We note that the pressure is obtained and calculated
using Navier-Stokes equation. It is clearly observed from the figure that the
pressure drop along the shell side of membrane reactor is low. This could
be due to the friction of fluid with the surface. The pressure drop along
the membrane extractors is not significant, which can help to reduce the
operating costs of the process.

4. Conclusion

A CFD simulation was conducted to investigate the separation of salts

from wastewater using hollow fiber and tubular membranes. Conservation
equations including continuity and momentum were solved in the two
membranes. Simulation results including concentration, concentration
polarization, velocity, and pressure distribution in the hollow fiber and
150 L. Salama et al.
tubular membranes were presented. It is found that, during the separation
process, the concentration decrease in the region near the inlet of hollow
fiber membrane along the length of fiber more than in that of tubular
membrane, indicating the higher efficiency of the hollow fiber membrane.
The same behavior is observed for the concentration polarization
attributing the smaller diameter of pores in the hollow fiber membrane
compared to the tubular one. Furthermore, the pressure drop along the
membrane extractors is not significant in the hollow fiber membrane reactor,
which can help to reduce the operating costs of the process. It was also
shown that the feed velocity is the most important parameter in the removal
processes. This leads to say that the hollow fiber membrane has a good
control in separation process of salts from wastewater more than the tubular
membrane.

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