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Engineering Thesis
December 31, 2012
This could be carried out primarily to properly secure and label the wiring, outside of the
control cabinet, and the piping between instrumentation. This would aid in making the plant
more robust and suitable for use in a commercial sense.
9 VMEMD Technology
Distillation is a simple principle that has been practiced over many years. The general
process of distillation involves a saline water feed being heated to produce a vapour of
fresh water that is then collected and condensed. This results in the separation of fresh
water from saline and is also known as desalination. A new distillation technology, known
as Vacuum-Multi-Effect-Membrane-Distillation (VMEMD), has been developed by MEMSYS
Clearwater Pty Ltd. VMEMD is a thermally driven separation process which is utilised to
desalinate saline water. With the addition of multiple distillation effects, porous
membranes and a reduction in pressure, the process becomes more efficient. The
efficiency of the technology, its thermally driven nature and ability to remove chemicals
that other desalination technologies cannot were the reasons it was chosen for the
Tjuntjuntjara project [2].
9.1 Functional Description
9.1.1
MEMSYS Module
The V-MEMD module consists of 6 modular blocks that are held together by an adjustable
bracket. The first of these blocks is the steam raiser. Heated water flows through the steam
raiser which is exposed to the system vacuum. The lower pressure reduces the boiling
point of the water and causes it to flash. The steam produced can then move through a
porous membrane to the next block. After the steam raiser, comes the first of 4 effects.
Each effect consists of a foil and membrane frame with the saline feed flowing between
them, as shown in Figure 1.
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Figure 1 - VMEMD module flow diagram [3]
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