Modelling the Process of Seawater Desalination in a Membrane Desalination Evaporator System

This study presents a dynamic numerical model of a hybrid membrane desalination system that combines evaporation module and condensation in hollow fibre membranes contactor. Developed in MATLAB/Simulink, the model accounts for unsteady heating and a closed gas circulation loop. A quasi-steady condenser module was first validated against experimental literature data, demonstrating less than 8% deviation in condensate flux. The Taguchi method was then applied to optimize membrane characteristics, identifying porosity as the dominant factor (optimal: 77%), with pore size (380 nm) and thermal conductivity (0.18 W/(m K)) playing secondary roles. These parameters were integrated into a full dynamic model of the evaporator–condenser system, which was validated against field temperature measurements from Vietnam, yielding R2 = 0.986. Over an 8-h daylight cycle, the simulated system produced 2.39 kg of fresh water using a 0.047 m2 membrane area. While the validated framework confirms the concept’s technical feasibility, the optimized membrane configuration and daily productivity estimates remain numerical predictions that require pilot-scale experimental verification before practical deployment.