Seyed Abdollatif Hashemifard

tIn this study, diethylene glycol (DEG) as an absorbent was used for gas dehydration. Forthis purpose, hollow fiber membrane contactor was fabricated from polyvinyl chloride. Theeffect of surface modification with polydimethylsiloxane in the presence of calcium car-bonate nanoparticles, relative humidity percentage of inlet air, variation in the gas andliquid flow rates in a dehydration process were investigated. The surface modification ofthe membranes increased the contact angle from 64◦to 101◦and a liquid entry pressureof as high as 7 bar was achieved. Moreover, increasing the gas flow rate led to a significantenhancement in absorption performance. Conversely, it was observed that the liquid flowrate had marginal effect on the mass transfer efficiency and flux i.e. RM+L/RM+G= 0.001–0.01.This revealed that the mass transfer resistance was not controlled by the liquid phase.Although higher fluxes were observed for the unmodified membrane contactor, the mem-brane modified with polydimethylsiloxane and calcium carbonate nanoparticles (i.e. M0.5-1)was more effective compared to the neat membrane (M0) in a 35-day long-term perfor-mance test i.e. M0.5-1≈ 0.12 versus M0= 1.0. The results show that the applied techniquefor fabricating the hollow fiber membrane contactor can be a promising technique in gasconditioning.