Implementation of membrane models on a CAPE-OPEN tool to simulate a process including RO membranes

Abstract

Process simulators are a useful tool for evaluating different configurations of chemical processes and developing new ones. Although these programs include many standard units like reactor or distillation towers, membrane units are not usually included. In this paper, it is shown the possibility to implement a reverse osmosis (RO) membrane unit in the free process simulator COCO, using input membrane parameters. The RO modeling is based on the coupling of the solution diffusion model with a model for concentration polarization. The model was implemented as a Matlab CAPE-OPEN unit operation. In order to show the functionality of the developed application, a rinsing process adapted from literature was implemented to test different configurations. In this way, the combined use of the COCO simulator and the model of a reverse osmosis unit proved to be a useful tool for comparing the performance of different process configurations.