Anisotropic gypsum scaling of corrugated polyvinylidene fluoride hydrophobic membrane in direct contact membrane distillation

Membrane distillation (MD) technology has gained a lot of attention for treatment of geothermal brine, high salinity waste streams. However, mineral scaling remains a major challenge when treating complex high-salt brines. The development of surface-patterned superhydrophobic membranes is one of the core strategies to solve this problem. We prepared flat sheet membranes (F-PVDF) and hydrophobic membranes with micron-scale corrugated pattern (C-PVDF) using a phase separation method. Their scaling behavior was systematically evaluated using calcium sulfate solutions and the impact of the feed flow was innovatively investigated. Although C-PVDF shows higher contact angle and lower sliding angle than F-PVDF, the scaling resistance of C-PVDF in the perpendicular flow direction has worst scaling resistance. Although the nucleation barrier of the corrugated membrane is the same at both parallel and perpendicular flow directions based on the traditional thermodynamic nucleation theory, experimental observations show that the C-PVDF has the best scaling resistance in the parallel flow direction. A 3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model was used and the hydrodynamic state of the pattern membranes was assessed as a determinant of the scaling resistance. The corrugated membrane with parallel flow mode (flow direction in parallel to the corrugation ridge) induces higher fluid velocity within the channel, which mitigated the deposition of crystals. While in the perpendicular flow mode (flow direction in perpendicular to the corrugation ridge), the solutions confined in the corrugated grooves due to vortex shielding, which aggravates the scaling. These results shed light on the mechanism of scaling resistance of corrugated membranes from a hydrodynamic perspective and reveal the mechanism of anisotropy exhibited by corrugated membranes in MD.