A new type of polypropylene tubular membrane apparatus of rotating cross flow was designed to study experimentally the flow field characteristics of the tangential section of the membrane annular gap. The authors designed rotary linear tangential flow tubular membrane separator and its test system for the first time. Through the system, the flow field of rotary linear tangential flow with the advanced Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) was tested for the first time. A lot of streamlines and vorticity maps of the tangential section of separator in different operation conditions were obtained. The velocity distribution characteristics were analyzed quantitatively: 1. At non-vortex area, no matter how the operation parameters change, the velocity near to rotary tangential flow entrance was higher than the velocity far from entrance at the same radial coordinates. At vortex area, generally the flow velocity of inner vortex was lower than the outer vortex. At the vortex center, the velocity was lowest, the tangential velocity were equal to zero generally. At the vortex center zone, the tangential velocity was less than the axial velocity. 2. Under test operations, the tangential velocity and axial velocity of vortices borders are 1-2 times of average axial velocity of membrane module annular gap. The maximum tangential velocity and axial velocity of ellipse vortices were 2-6 times of average axial velocity of membrane module annular gap. 3. The vortices that are formed on the tangential section, there existed mass transfer between inner and outer parts of fluid. Much fluid of outer vortices got into the inner ones, which was able to prevent membrane tube from particles blocking up very soon.