Department of Chemical and Process Engineering, Centre for Environment and Sustainability, University of Surrey, Guildford, GU2 7XH, UK.
Sci Rep. 2022 Aug 12;12(1):13741. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-16974-x.
Microbial electrosynthesis (MES), is an emerging technology, for sustainable wastewater treatment. The dilute acetate solution, produced via MES, must be recovered, as dilute solutions can be expensive to store and transport. The acetate is expensive and environmentally damaging to recover by heat-intensive evaporative methods, such as distillation. In pursuit of a better energy economy, a membrane separation system is simulated to raise the concentration from 1 to 30 wt%, at a hydraulic pressure of approximately 50 bar. The concentrate is then simulated to be heat dried. Reverse osmosis (RO) could rase the acetate concentration to 8 wt%. A novel adaptation of osmotically assisted reverse osmosis (OARO) is then simulated to increase the concentration from 8 to 30 wt%. The inclusion of OARO, rather than a standalone RO unit, reduces the total heat and electric power requirement by a factor of 4.3. It adds to the membrane area requirement by a factor of 6. The OARO simulations are conducted by the internal concentration polarisation (ICP) model. Before the model is used, it is fitted to OARO experimental data, obtained from the literature. Membrane structure number of 701 µm and permeability coefficient of 2.51 L/m/h/bar are ascertained from this model fitting exercise.
微生物电解合成（MES）是一种新兴的可持续废水处理技术。MES 产生的稀乙酸溶液必须回收，因为稀溶液储存和运输成本较高。乙酸价格昂贵，用热密集型蒸发方法（如蒸馏）回收会对环境造成破坏。为了追求更好的能源经济性，模拟了一种膜分离系统，将浓度从 1 提高到 30wt%，在大约 50 巴的液压下。然后模拟浓缩物进行热干燥。反渗透（RO）可以将乙酸浓度提高到 8wt%。然后模拟一种新颖的渗透压辅助反渗透（OARO）适应性，将浓度从 8 提高到 30wt%。与独立的 RO 装置相比，采用 OARO 可将总热量和电力需求降低 4.3 倍。它将膜面积要求增加了 6 倍。OARO 模拟通过内部浓度极化（ICP）模型进行。在使用模型之前，需要根据文献中的 OARO 实验数据对其进行拟合。从模型拟合中确定了膜结构数为 701µm 和渗透率系数为 2.51L/m/h/bar。
