however, requires that the active membrane he on the interior of the hollow fiber tubes.

It is much easier to apply a uniform membrane film to the exterior surface of the tubes, but to take advantage of such an arrangement the feed must be applied to the shell side, on which some deviation from ideal plug flow is inevitable. Such deviations can, however, be minimized by good design; so this arrangement is in fact widely used in commercial systems. 8.2.1 Effect of Flow Pattern

Since the effective separation factor is reduced by back pressure (Eq. 8.10), the flow pattern has a pronounced effect on the performance of a membrane system. This may be clearly shown by calculating the purity-recovery profiles for different flow schemes. As in any mass transfer process, countercurrent flow maximizes the average driving force and therefore provides the most efficient arrangement. It is relatively easy to achieve a reasonable approximation to plug flow on the high-pressure side, but this is much more difficult on the low-pressure side because of the wide variation in the gas velocity (from close to zero at the closed end to a significant value at the permeate exit). If the Pressure ratio is large, deviations from plug flow on the low-pressure side have a relatively minor effect on performance, provided that plug flow is maintained on the high-pressure side. The operation of many membrane modules, particularly those of the hollow fiber type, is therefore well represented by the cross-flow model, which assumes plug flow on the high-pressure side with perfect mixing on the low-pressure side [Figure 8.7(b)]. The worst case from the point of view of process efficiency is perfect mixing on both sides of the membrane. This provides a useful limiting case for assessing the effect of flow pattern on performance, tail in general one would try to avoid this condition en an operating system. 8.3 Calculation of Recovery Purity Profiles 8.3.1 Mixed Flow The fractional recovery (R) is defined simply as the fraction of the less Permeable species that emerges in the raffinate product stream: (8.12) for a well-mixed system the mole fractions x2 and y2 in the raffinate and permeate streams are related through Eq. 8.2. The separation factor is constant throughout the system and is given by Eq. 8.10 with x= x2. Calculation of the recoverypurity profile is therefore straightforward, requiring only the combination of an overall mass balance for the less permeable species: with Eqs. 8.2, 8.10, and 8.12.

8.3.2 Cross-Flow The calculation is slightly more complex for the cross-flow case, since it is necessary to account for the variation of partial pressure with position on the high-pressure sld. For the ideal cross-flow system sketched in Figure 8.6(h), a differential mass balance for the more rapidly diffusing species gives:

where L is the (local) molar flow rate on the high-pressure side. The local Concentrations x and y on the high- and low-pressure sides of the membrane are related by Eq. 8.2. Substitution in Eq. 8.14 and rearranging yields

which may be integrated from the inlet (x x,) to any arbitrary exists mole fraction (x2):

Combining Eqs. 8.12 and 8.16, we obtain: