Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
1 College of Engineering, Babylon University - Iraq
2 College ofEngineering, Ferdowsi University Of Mashhad -Iran
3 College of Engineering, University of Technology - Iraq
Abstract
Nitrate contamination is worldwide water pollution posing a major
health hazard to human and animal life. Challenges are being faced to get fresh
water for the areas having a low amount of usable water. This study aims to
asses and evaluates the feasibility of removing nitrate from groundwater by
using cheap approaches. A pilot-scale solar distillation membrane filter, was
designed and constructed for this study, the set up was designed into two
partitions: i) water heater and ii) membrane distillation. The effect of several
operating parameters such as feed and distillate temperature, nitrate
concentration, and pH, on water flux and nitrate removal efficiency, was
investigated. The results showed that 85 and 93 percent removal efficiencies for
nitrate and total dissolved solids, respectively. The effect of important
parameters of solar performance membrane filter distillation (SPMFD) process
including solar collector efficiency (𝜂𝑐
), gained output ratio (GOR) and
significant operating parameters containing feed and condensate temperature,
feed nitrate concentration and pH were studied in this work and it could be
concluded that water flux was increased exponentially with increasing feed
temperature, and under the same operating conditions, average water flux
changed from 9.52 to 34 kg/m2 per hour when temperature increased from 60
to 90 °C gradually. However, no significant effect was found by varying nitrate
and TDS concentration and pH on water flux. It can be concluded that
membrane distillation and solar desalination processes could be the efficient
methodologies to exploit in the large nitrate-affected rural areas of Iraq and its
surrounding with abundant sunlight, particularly during the critical dry season
Keywords
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