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

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 degrees C similar to 110 degrees C), inlet pressures (0.1 similar to 0.4 MPa), volume flow rates of nitrogen-enriched air (NEA) (30 similar to 120 L/min) and flight altitudes (1.5 similar to 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.