ABSTRACT
The announcement of the asymmetric cellulose acetate membrane by Loeb and Sourirajan in 1960 made the membrane desalination process industrially practical and opened up the avenue for membrane applications to various separation processes. The membrane desalination process has grown steadily and become well accepted in the marketplace. Despite many technological advancements, the basic plant design for the seawater desalination process has not changed. Reverse osmosis membranes, which exhibit sodium chloride separations slightly lower than those for desalination purposes, but much higher fluxes, were developed in the middle of the 1980s for various water treatment purposes. A variety of polysulfone membranes were evaluated for the processing of crude oil feed stocks. The product of this process is a permeate that is the equivalent of a gas oil and a concentrate enriched in asphaltenes.
