Slug flow in a flat sheet ultrafiltration module: experiments and numerical simulation

The influence of two-phase flow patterns especially slug pattern has been investigated in the recent studies of the effect of gas injection on membrane fouling. It has been demonstrated that gas injection is an effective way to enhance shear force and permeate flux. In this paper, the effect of slug flow bubbles on enhancing shear force in the ultrafiltration (UF) process in a flat sheet module is investigated experimentally by image processing and numerically using the OpenFOAM software. The flat sheet module is analyzed with a video system facilitated with a high speed camera. The characteristics of bubbles such as their distribution and velocity from measurements using image processing are compared with those of the computational simulations. The results show that the shear stress induced by the slug flow is significant.