ABSTRACT
Pore wetting of membrane distillation (MD) membranes during continuous MD operations is a major challenge to widespread the MD technology. To solve this problem, many efforts have been made to improve the hydrophobicity of both polymeric and ceramic membranes because extensive studies have shown that an increase in hydrophobicity of MD membranes can effectively increase the wetting resistance. As the wetting property of a membrane is determined by both geometrical structure and surface chemistry, researchers have manipulated the nonwettability of MD membranes by means of bulk modification and surface modification via different approaches. In this chapter, these methods and their effectiveness in terms of enhancement in contact angle and liquid entry pressure of the resultant membranes will be introduced.
