Conjugate heat and mass transfer in a hollow fiber membrane module for liquid desiccant air dehumidification: A free surface model approach

Conjugate heat and mass transfer in a hollow fiber membrane module used for liquid desiccant air dehumidification is investigated. The module is like a shell-and-tube heat exchanger where the liquid desiccant stream flows in the tube side, while the air stream flows in the shell side in a counter flow arrangement. Due to the numerous fibers in the shell, a direct modeling of the whole module is difficult. This research takes a new approach. A representative cell comprising of a single fiber, the liquid desiccant flowing inside the fiber and the air stream flowing outside the fiber, is considered. The air stream outside the fiber has an outer free surface (Happel’s free surface model). Further, the equations governing the fluid flow and heat and mass transfer in the two streams are combined together with the heat and mass diffusion equations in membranes. The conjugate problem is then solved to obtain the velocity, temperature and concentration distributions in the two fluids and in the membrane. The local and mean Nusselt and Sherwood numbers in the cell are then obtained and experimentally validated.