To address the issues of lower thermal efficiency

susceptibility to environmental influences

and floating liquid desiccant in traditional liquid desiccant regeneration methods using packed towers

this article proposes a liquid desiccant regeneration method based on vacuum membrane distillation. The effects of liquid desiccant temperature

flow rate

mass fraction

and the vacuum degree of the system on the membrane flux

thermal efficiency

transmembrane mass transfer coefficient

and rejection rate were studied through experiments and simulations. The results show that the membrane flux increases with an increase in the liquid desiccant temperature

flow rate

and vacuum degree of the system and decreases sharply with an increase in the liquid desiccant mass fraction. The deviation of the experimental membrane flux from the simulated ones are within ±10%. The thermal efficiency increases and tends to be constant with the increase in liquid desiccant temperature and the vacuum degree of the system and decreases with an increase in the liquid desiccant flow rate and mass fraction. The transmembrane mass transfer coefficient increases with the increase in liquid desiccant temperature

flow rate

and system vacuum

and decreases with an increase in the liquid desiccant mass fraction. In the experiment

when the liquid desiccant temperature

the flow rate and the mass fraction are 80 ℃

1.0 m/s and 20%

respectively

the vacuum degree of the system is 93 kPa

and the membrane flux reaches the maximum

which is 7.18 kg/(m2?h). Even at a high mass fraction of 40%

the membrane flux can still reach 1 kg/(m2?h). The thermal efficiency is generally higher than 80%. When the solution flow rate is 0.6 m/s

all performance parameters can reach a higher level.