A review of membrane-based air dehumidification

Air dehumidification plays an important role in improving air quality and maintaining thermal comfort. Increasing attention is paid to the membrane-based technology, which is based on water vapour transmembrane transport driven by mass transfer potential, together with sensible heat transfer under temperature difference. Membrane-based air dehumidification has been applied in heating, ventilation and air conditioning, compressed air dehumidification and environmental control in space vehicle, and some other engineering fields. This paper summarizes recent research results in these fields, including fundamental principles, membrane materials, membrane module structures, operation conditions and theory models. In the end, two methods of membrane-based dehumidification performance evaluation are introduced from perspective of energy and exergy, respectively.