Open Access

ARTICLE

Experimental Study on the Performance of an Onboard Hollow-Fiber-Membrane Air Separation Module

Yi Tu¹, Yu Zeng^2,*

1 School of Mechanical Engineering, Hunan University of Arts and Science, Changde, 415000, China
2 School of Aeronautic Science and Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing, 100191, China

* Corresponding Author: Yu Zeng. Email:

Fluid Dynamics & Materials Processing 2022, 18(2), 355-370. https://doi.org/10.32604/fdmp.2022.018423

Received 23 July 2021; Accepted 03 October 2021; Issue published 16 December 2021

Abstract

Onboard air separation devices, based on hollow fiber membranes, are traditionally used for the optimization of aircraft fuel tank inerting systems. In the present study, a set of tests have been designed and executed to assess the air separation performances of these systems for different air inlet temperatures (70°C∼110°C), inlet pressures (0.1∼0.4 MPa), volume flow rates of nitrogen-enriched air (NEA) (30∼120 L/min) and flight altitudes (1.5∼18 km). In particular, the temperature, pressure, volume flow rate, and oxygen concentration of air, NEA and oxygen-enriched air (OEA) have been measured. The experimental results show that the oxygen concentration of NEA, air separation coefficient, and nitrogen utilization coefficient decrease with the rising of air inlet temperature, air inlet pressure, and flight altitude. The effect of air inlet pressure on the above three parameters is significant, while the influence of air inlet temperature and flight altitude is relatively small.

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Keywords

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