ABSTRACT
Water scarcity is among the most serious crises facing the world as a result of poor water management and climate change. Of a population of 6.75 billion, 1.1 billion lack access to drinking water, and 2.6 billion people are short of adequate water for sanitation. To cope with the situation of water scarcity, investigators and engineers have been attempting to develop treatment methods of every sorts, which aim to eliminate the micropollutants in water bodies (i.e., wastewater treatment process), or to increase water supplies via the safe reuse of wastewater and efficient desalination of seawater and brackish water (Shannon et al., 2008). Among all the processes used for water and wastewater treatment, membrane technology is a very attractive, reliable, and friendly process at present. Membranes are selective barriers that allow some types of matter to pass through while retaining others. Permeability and selectivity are two basic parameters of the membrane, and they are strongly dependent on membrane pore size and pore size distribution. The membrane-based processes used for water and wastewater treatment include direct membrane filtration (e.g., microfiltration, ultrafiltration, nanofiltration, and reverse osmosis) and hybrid membrane processes (e.g., membrane bioreactors and coagulation-coupled membrane filtration). The implementation of membrane processes strongly depends on water components and end-user requirements.
