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AssigneeAqua Membranes Inc.
InventorsRodney Herrington, Kevin Roderick, Christopher Kurth
Estimating the term…
Printed spacer membrane elements offer the unique advantage of applying any pattern on the membrane surface to act as the feed spacer material. This is in contrast to conventional feed spacer mesh material that is uniform in thickness and density throughout the mesh. More open feed spaces can be utilized allowing closer spacing between membrane sheets in the feed space which allows more membrane sheet to be wrapped around the membrane element—resulting in more permeate flow—while simultaneously reducing the pressure loss from the feed to reject end of the element. Unique design features of printed spacers dramatically improve performance of membrane elements in contrast to conventional feed spacer mesh elements in the prior art.
A spiral wound element comprising two or more membrane sheets, each membrane sheet being folded on itself at a fold line providing first and second membrane halves facing each other, wherein each folded membrane sheet is spirally wound around the center tube with the fold line proximal the center tube, and the first membrane half forming an inner wind relative to the second membrane half, each membrane sheet having a plurality of spacing features disposed on a surface of at least one of the first and second halves, where the distance from the fold line to the first spacing feature is greater than or equal to the diameter of the center tube divided by the number of membrane sheets with fold lines proximal the center tube.
An assembly, comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.