Optimising the flow through a concertinaed filtration membrane

TL;DR

This paper investigates the optimal design of concertinaed filtration membranes, analyzing how their configuration affects performance, and identifies specific setups that maximize flux based on physical parameters.

Contribution

It introduces a combined numerical and asymptotic approach to determine optimal membrane configurations, revealing that optimal setups are limited to two main types.

Findings

Multiple configurations can maximize flux for fixed parameters.

Optimal configurations are either centered or corner-angled membranes.

Flux depends on membrane thickness and permeance.

Abstract

Membrane filtration is a vital industrial process, with applications including air purification and blood filtration. In this paper, we study the optimal design for a concertinaed filtration membrane composed of angled porous membranes and dead-ends. We examine how the filter performance depends on the angle, position, thickness, and permeance of the membrane, through a combination of numerical and asymptotic approaches, the latter in the limit of a slightly angled membrane. We find that, for a membrane of fixed angle and physical properties, there can exist multiple membrane positions that maximise the flux for an applied pressure difference. More generally, we show that while the maximal flux achievable depends on the membrane thickness and permeance, the optimal membrane configuration is always in one of two setups: centred and diagonal across the full domain; or angled and in the corner of the domain.