Alaa H. Al-Fatlawi; Mohsen Karrabi; Ghassan Abukhanafer; Ahmed AL Samlan
Abstract
Nitrate contamination is worldwide water pollution posing a majorhealth hazard to human and animal life. Challenges are being faced to get freshwater for the areas having a low amount ...
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Nitrate contamination is worldwide water pollution posing a majorhealth hazard to human and animal life. Challenges are being faced to get freshwater for the areas having a low amount of usable water. This study aims toasses and evaluates the feasibility of removing nitrate from groundwater byusing cheap approaches. A pilot-scale solar distillation membrane filter, wasdesigned and constructed for this study, the set up was designed into twopartitions: i) water heater and ii) membrane distillation. The effect of severaloperating parameters such as feed and distillate temperature, nitrateconcentration, and pH, on water flux and nitrate removal efficiency, wasinvestigated. The results showed that 85 and 93 percent removal efficiencies fornitrate and total dissolved solids, respectively. The effect of importantparameters of solar performance membrane filter distillation (SPMFD) processincluding solar collector efficiency (𝜂𝑐), gained output ratio (GOR) andsignificant operating parameters containing feed and condensate temperature,feed nitrate concentration and pH were studied in this work and it could beconcluded that water flux was increased exponentially with increasing feedtemperature, and under the same operating conditions, average water fluxchanged from 9.52 to 34 kg/m2 per hour when temperature increased from 60to 90 °C gradually. However, no significant effect was found by varying nitrateand TDS concentration and pH on water flux. It can be concluded thatmembrane distillation and solar desalination processes could be the efficientmethodologies to exploit in the large nitrate-affected rural areas of Iraq and itssurrounding with abundant sunlight, particularly during the critical dry season
