Evaluation of using a porous medium approach to simulate flat-sheet membrane bioreactors

The porous medium approach has been applied by others to study the global hydrodynamics in hollow-fiber (HF) membrane bioreactors (MBR). This study explores the usability of the porous medium approach for flat-sheet (FS) MBR and introduces a CFD-based numerical calibration of the porous parameters. Two key modeling strategies are suggested to ensure the pressure prediction accuracy: (1) use SST k - ω turbulence model incorporated with an intermittency transition model (SSIT); (2) considerate two-phase flow during the calibration. The results showed that SSIT significantly improved the pressure prediction of the flow between two sheets. Also, unlike HF MBR, the gas phase was observed to be non-negligible during the calibration for FS MBR. The numerically calibrated porous parameters were then applied in a three-dimensional simplified model (SPM), where multiple membrane sheets were treated as one porous zone. The SPM was compared with a realistic model (RM), where all membrane sheets were simulated directly. A similar pressure distribution was observed in both models; however, local flow characteristics (i.e., the acceleration of the flow entering the module zone) were not reflected in the SPM. Hence, it is recommended to use the porous medium approach for global hydrodynamics investigation when the local flow characteristics are not of interest.