Characteristics of multi-stage AGMD-DCMD cascade system for oxygen isotope production

Membrane distillation (MD) appears to be useful for the separation of the light isotopes such as oxygen and hydrogen isotopes contained in water, because membrane permeation units are compact and simple, and more importantly its energy consumption is low compared to conventional water fractional distillation.1-4 Permeation fluxes and the degree of oxygen isotope separation of AGMD (Air Gap Membrane Distillation) and VEMD (Vacuum Enhanced Membrane Distillation) processes were measured by using the hot water feed. Even though VEMD shows slightly higher isotopic separation degree with higher permeation flux, it is very difficult to apply VEMD to multi-stage cascade system. Since local oxygen isotope separation coefficient for a single membrane unit is low, multi-stage membrane cascade system is required to increase isotopic concentration further in product. Although AGMD is suitable for constructing the membrane cascading system, permeation flux for AGMD is still too low to apply to the isotope production system. In this investigation, we increased permeation flux of AGMD using AGMD-DCMD (Direct Contact Membrane Distillation) combined process. Permeation flux and degree of isotope separation of AGMD-DCMD combined process were measured by using 10 stages cascade system