Vacuum membrane distillation (VMD) process received a great deal of attention by many investigators because of its promising applications in several separation areas. It is a rising technology for seawater or brine desalination process. The process simply consists of a flat sheet hydrophobic microporous PTFE membrane and diaphragm vacuum pump without a condenser for the water recovery or trap. In this work, VMD performance was investigated for aqueous NaCl solution. In order to enhance the performance of the VMD process in desalination, that is, to get more flux, it is necessary to study the effect of operating parameters on the yield of distillate water. The influence of operational parameters such as feed flow rate, feed temperature, feed salt concentration and permeate pressure on the membrane distillation (MD) permeation flux have been investigated. The VMD performance showed that this device could reach a desalting degree of 99.99% which was not affected by feed concentration. The membrane distillation flux reached 14.62 kg/m 2 h at 333 K bulk feed temperature, 1.5 kPa permeate pressure, 54 l/h feed flow rate, and 30,000 mg/l feed concentration. With these chosen operating conditions, experiments with concentrated salt water showed a permeate flux decreases with time, but these reduction is less than 14% over a long term experimentation. However, this fouling is reversible and easily removed by a water washing. This study promotes the research attention in apply of VMD for over-concentrated salt water means rejected brines of reverse osmosis process.

This work addresses the development and identification of optimal low cost membrane morphologies for bacteria separation applications. Using uniaxial dry compaction method, ceramic membranes (CM1-CM3) were prepared using kaolin, quartz, calcium carbonate, sodium carbonate, boric acid, sodium metasilicate, and poly-vinyl alcohol (PVA) precursors. The fabricated membranes possessed diverse pore morphologies (0.7-4.5 µm average pore size and 39.4-19.3% porosity). Amongst all membranes, the CM3 membrane with wide pore morphology (average pore size of 4.5 µm and porosity of 19.3%) provided the best performance during the direct-flow MF of synthetic Escherichia coli (DH5α strain) solutions. The CM3 membrane provided a trans-membrane flux varying from 1.21 × 10 − 2 -3.51 × 10 −3 m 3 /m 2 .s after 10 minutes of direct-flow MF for a variation in feed concentrations of 0.004 -14.9 × 10 6 CFU/mL. Corresponding bacterial removal efficiency and log 10 reduction value (LRV) values varied from 99-99.9999% and 2-6 respectively. Further, various fouling models have been evaluated for their use in measuring flux decline data. The results indicated that both membrane pore morphologies and concentration of E. coli strains significantly influenced the measured transmembrane flux, fouling index, and separation efficiency.

A novel multi-effect membrane distillation (MEMD) process has been implemented to treat water containing four different inorganic solutes. The 4-stage MEMD module was developed based on the air-gap configuration. The influence of operating parameters like concentration, feed temperature, flow rate and operating time on permeate fluxes of zinc sulfate, sodium fluoride, magnesium chloride and sodium carbonate solutions was observed. Concentration had negligible effect on the MEMD's permeate flux, while its performance increased with increasing feed temperature and flow rate. Its separation efficiency was stable at more than99.91% throughout the experiment. In addition, its specific energy consumption after the recovery of the latent heat of vaporization and sensible heat of brine was measured at different component concentrations and found to be independent of the type of component.

Natural gas has been formed by the degradation of organic matter accumulated in the past millions of years. Two main mechanisms (biogenic and thermogenic) are responsible for this degradation. Natural gas is a complex mixture of hydrocarbon and non-hydrocarbon constituents and exists as a gas under atmospheric conditions. The objective of gas processing is to separate: Natural gas, Condensate, Non-condensable, Acid gases, Water. The raw gas is first treated to remove typical contaminants. Next, the treated gas is chilled, cooled and condensed to-162°C in succession using propane, ethylene and methane. Last stage is pumping LNG to storage tanks and awaiting shipment. Liquefied natural gas is used to transport natural gas over long distances, often by sea. In most cases, LNG terminals are purpose built ports used exclusively to export or import LNG. Natural gas consists almost entirely of methane (CH 4), the simplest hydrocarbon compound. India is the 14 th largest gas consumer 58 bcm (~158 mmscmd), 4th largest LNG importer 31 bcm (~82 mmscmd), Economy growing at CAGR of about 6-7% with similar growth in Energy Consumption. Government aims to significantly increase share of Natural Gas in Indian Energy basket to in coming years. Despite increase in domestic gas production dependency on imported gas to increase substantially. Pipeline network developing into a national grid needs to grow faster, connecting new markets. ExxonMobil's history in China dates back to 1892. This paper provides the present demand of LGN in India and also predicts future requirements, to help India's economic and social growth.