Wen Zhang, Ph.D., P.E., BCEE
Principal Investigator
Professor
Phone: (973) 596-5520
Fax: (973) 596-5790
Email: wen.zhang@njit.edu
Office Location: Colton Hall 211
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Water and Nutrients Recovery from Synthetic Source-separated Human Urine using AGMD
A visiting Ph.D. student, Zhifeng Hu, co-advised by Dr. Wen Zhang’s group at New Jersey Institute of Technology and Dr. Hong Yao’s group at Beijing Jiaotong University, published a paper in Journal of Environmental Chemical Engineering, and investigated the performances of urine separation and water recovery using air gap membrane distillation (AGMD), which recovers water via vapor conversion and transfer across the membrane and concentrates urine salts. The effects of operation conditions (e.g., the temperatures and flow rates of feed and coolant) on water permeate flux were examined. The results show that a high permeate flux (~14 L·m-2·h-1) and a low specific ammonia transfer (< 0.1 g·L-1) were achieved under optimal operations of the feed flow rate and the temperatures. Increasing feed flow or cold coolant flow or the thermal gradients can substantially increase permeate flux. Moreover, the Stefan diffusion model was used to compare and validate the experimental observations. The actual operational parameters and membrane properties (e.g., feed/coolant temperatures, air gap thickness, and membrane thickness) were employed in the model calculation without any fitting or unknown parameters. The modeling and experimental results matched well and highlights the promising potential of this model for guiding the design and operation of this AGDM process for urine separation and water recovery.
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Wen's Research Group