A new spiral-wound air-gap membrane distillation (AGMD) module based on hollow fiber (SW-AGMD-HF) involved with the adiabatic tubular net was developed for seawater desalination. Permeate flux (JW)

gained output ratio (GOR) and thermal efficiency (η) were introduced to indicate process performance. The effects of hot feed-in temperature

hot feed-in flow rate

cold feed-in temperature and cold feed-in flow rate on the above three indicators were studied with 3.5% (mass) modeled seawater as feed solution. JW

GOR and η increased as a higher hot feed temperature was used. JW decreased with increasing cold feed temperature

while GOR and η presented an opposite tendency. A larger hot feed flow rate would only increase JW. Cold feed flow rate showed a slight influence on desalination process performance. During the experiments

total dissolved solid of permeate was kept blow 3.0 mg·L-1 all the time

and relative ion rejection rate was above 99.99%. The maximum permeate flux of 5.87 L·m-2·h-1

maximum gained output ratio of 5.37 and maximum thermal efficiency of 0.943 were also obtained. Consequently

the introduction of clean energy as an alternative of conventional electric heat source could further raise the actual application potentiality of membrane distillation process.