Membrane Separation Process Design and Intensification

Membrane separation has gained significant interest from the chemical industry due to their compactness, energy efficiency, and modularity. Recent trends in process intensification also emphasizes the importance of a more widespread adoption of membrane-based processes for significant cost savings and sustainable operation. We present a prototype software framework for the automated design, optimization, intensification, benchmarking, and technoeconomic analysis of various types of membrane systems, including gas separation, pervaporation, and vapor permeation, while covering wide ranges of their operations. The framework is based on a generic building block-based representation (Demirel, Li, and Hasan, Comput. Chem. Eng.2017,150, 2–38) that can be used for the automated process synthesis and screening of numerous designs for selecting optimal membrane modules, processes, and network configurations. We can also generate rank-ordered lists of optimal process flowsheets based on different objectives. We present several case studies to demonstrate the utility of the proposed approach and report substantially better solutions compared to the designs reported in the literature.