Development of an axisymmetric parallel solution algorithm for membrane separation process

Abstract

A novel parallel technique that couples the lattice-Boltzmann method and a finite volume scheme for the prediction of concentration polarisation and pore blocking in axisymmetric cross-flow membrane separation process is presented. The model uses the Lattice-Boltzmann method to solve the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations for hydrodynamics and the finite volume method to solve the convection-diffusion equation for solute particles. Concentration polarisation is modelled for micro-particles by having the diffusion coefficient defined as a function of particle concentration and shear rate. The model considers the effect of an incompressible cake formation. Pore blocking phenomenon is predicted for filtration membrane fouling by using the rate of particles arriving at the membrane surface. The simulation code is parallelised in two ways. Compute Unified Device Architecture(CUDA) is used for a cluster of graphical processing units(GPUs) and Message Passing Interface(MPI) is utilised for a cluster of central processing units(CPUs), with various parallelisation techniques to optimise memory usage for higher performance. The proposed model is validated by comparing to analytical solutions and experimental result.