Optimal model-free control of solar thermal membrane distillation system

An experimental study of solar thermal vacuum membrane distillation desalination

An experimental desalination system coupling a vacuum membrane distillation (VMD) unit and a vacuum tube solar heat collection (SHC) unit was developed and tested. The parametric sensitivity of the VMD unit performance was investigated first using an electric heater as the heat source, and then the whole system was examined using solar heat. It was revealed that hot feed temperatures higher tha...

Solar thermal powered desalination: membrane versus distillation technologies

Multiple Effect Distillation (MED) is generally considered to be the desalination technology most suited to integration with concentrating solar thermal collectors on a medium to large scale. However the cost and energy requirement of Reverse Osmosis (RO) have fallen significantly in recent years, so that solar thermal powered RO deserves consideration. We compare commercial desalination proces...

On Designing of Membrane Thickness and Thermal Conductivity for Large Scale Membrane Distillation Modules

Membrane distillation has the potential to concentrate solutions to their saturation level, thus offering the possibility to recover valuable salts from the solutions. The process performance and stability, however, is strongly dependent upon the features of membranes applied. In addition, several other parameters, membrane thickness and thermal conductivity significantly affect the process per...

Optimal control of a reactive distillation column

Model Predictive Inferential Control of a Distillation Column

Typical production objectives in distillation process require the delivery of products whose compositions meet certain specifications. The distillation control system, therefore, must hold product compositions as near the set points as possible in faces of upset. In this project, inferential model predictive control, that utilizes an artificial neural network estimator and model predictive cont...