The sensitivity of direct contact membrane distillation to feed temperatures and feed flow rate is investigated experimentally. At very low flow rates, the process becomes heat transfer limited where the thermal energy of the aqueous feed solution is lost by the conduction resistance minimizing the distillate production. At high flow rates, the film heat transfer coefficient for both liquid solutions increases, creating a larger temperature difference across the membrane boundaries. Hence, the mass fluxes increase linearly with the water flow rate. These findings are also assessed by simulating the heat and mass transfer equations that describe the membrane distillation (MD) thermo‐physical operation. It is found that the underlying physics of the MD module must faithfully capture and explain the true process behaviour. Hence, a modified correlation for the Nusselt number is developed and tested.

中文翻译：

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通过改进的传热关联了解和增强直接接触膜蒸馏性能

实验研究了直接接触膜蒸馏对进料温度和进料流速的敏感性。在非常低的流速下，该过程受到热传递的限制，其中通过传导阻力使馏出物的产量最小化而使进料水溶液的热能损失。在高流速下，两种液体溶液的薄膜传热系数都会增加，从而在薄膜边界上产生更大的温差。因此，质量通量随水流量线性增加。通过模拟描述膜蒸馏（MD）热物理操作的传热和传质方程，也可以评估这些发现。发现MD模块的基础物理必须忠实地捕获和解释真实的过程行为。因此，